Lives in the Balance
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: Follow-up to my Chicago P.D./Law and Order: SVU crossover story, "Out of the Dark", OCs. A friend of Voight's is attacked in his own home along with his family. Voight is determined to catch the people responsible, but the answers of who and why might be more disturbing than he realizes.
1. Chapter 1

Lives in the Balance

Hank Voight walked into the station and made a beeline for the front desk, pocketing his cell phone. "Trudy, I need to borrow your phone a minute."

His desk sergeant pushed the landline phone towards him and said with a 'by all means' shrug, "Go right ahead, Hank."

Hank picked up the receiver and dialed a number and listened to the repetitive ringing. Grumbling to himself, he put the receiver down, "Busy."

"Hank, did you hear what happened?" Trudy asked him.

This was never good. "What?"

Trudy leaned over her side of the desk and told him, "Olinsky helped a couple patrolmen catch some lunatic terrorizing passersby on the way to work this morning."

"No kidding," Hank said in a somewhat amused tone, "Good for him."

"Yeah," Trudy replied, "They got jammed up on the way in but they should be here any minute."

"So what exactly was this guy _doing_ to scare everyone?" Voight asked her.

Trudy just opened her mouth to answer when her eyes widened and looked to the entrance, Voight turned around and saw Olinsky coming in ahead of the patrolmen, carrying a hockey stick in one hand and a cheap Halloween costume hockey mask in the other, while they wrestled in a guy who looked like he hadn't bathed since last Halloween, and it'd probably been as long since he shaved.

Voight eyed these two items skeptically and in a nonchalant tone asked his friend and partner, "Taking up hockey?"

Alvin inhaled and exhaled slowly and shot Voight an irritated look and told him simply, "This city just keeps getting weirder. At this rate we're going to outdo New York."

"Yeah?" Voight asked, eyeing the hockey stick again, and in a simultaneously deadpan and cynical tone he added, "If this keeps up we might have to call in the Ninja Turtles."

Olinsky turned to one of the patrolmen and handed him the two items and told him, "Get this into evidence, and get that fruitcake locked up already."

Nothing could ever get Voight to involuntarily crack a smile, though this little incident came close, and he turned to Trudy and told her, "There are some days I love this job…" he looked back and added, "Others _not_ so much."

Trudy cracked a smile at his comment, and told him, "I'll see you around, Hank."

Voight merely nodded as he headed to scan in for upstairs.

* * *

Voight less than subtly slammed the receiver back down on the phone. He'd tried calling the same phone number five times already, and it was too early in the morning for there to be a logical explanation for there being no answer any of those times.

There was a knock on his door though Erin was already standing in the entranceway.

"Hey," she said.

He looked up at the woman he regarded as his surrogate daughter and responded, "Everything okay?"

The corners of Erin's mouth slowly turned up in a forced half smile and she replied, "Just fine…you?"

He offered a slightly less forced smile in return and told her, "I'm starting to reconsider my position on if paranoia is ever unjustified."

The half smile dropped from Erin's face and she asked him, "What's the matter?"

Voight leaned back in his chair and said to her, "You remember my friend, Paul Lynch, remember a while back I had to go chasing his granddaughter around New York City?"

Erin nodded. "Yeah, what about it?"

"I've been trying to call Paul all morning and there's no answer," Voight told her, "The granddaughter's still staying with him, her boyfriend too last I understood, somebody's _always_ at the house."

Erin was already considering what this likely meant and it wasn't good, she asked Voight, "Want some backup?"

"Yeah," Hank answered as he got up, "I don't want to take all of Intelligence out on something that might _just_ happen to be a wild goose chase. I'll get Olinsky and we'll move out."

* * *

Two squad cars pulled up outside of Paul Lynch's two story home. The block was already a pretty empty one as it was, half the houses on the street were vacant and had been for years, there wasn't _anyone_ around to tell them what was happening. Voight, Olinsky and Lindsay stepped out in their vests, guns drawn, and assessed the situation.

"Car's here," Voight called from the driveway.

Alvin looked up to the front porch for any signs of trouble and called back, "Door's open!"

The three people from Intelligence cautiously made their way up the stairs and showed themselves in, ready for anything, or so they hoped. Entering the hallway, Voight looked up the stairs but didn't see anything, he pivoted around with his gun drawn and checked each side of the hall before advancing to the dining room. From there he was able to see into the living room and saw two people on the floor, bound and gagged and unmoving.

"In here!" he called to the others, and he lowered his gun and stepped in and saw that it was his friend, Paul Lynch, a man in his early 60s, and his granddaughter Jackie's 19-year-old boyfriend, Roger Murdock. Both men had been forced face down and had their hands tied behind their backs, their feet tied together, and their mouths taped shut.

Alvin and Erin entered the dining room and saw what Voight saw, they put their guns away momentarily and helped him get the two men untied. Voight rolled Paul on his back and ripped the tape off his mouth, the older man slowly took in a breath and blinked his eyes.

"What happened, Paul?" Voight asked him.

There was no way to tell how long they'd been like this, but Voight's friend was notably dazed from the attack and was slow in responding, when he finally did he just answered with a weak shake of his head, "I don't know."

Alvin jerked the tape off Roger's mouth and was in the process of untying the boy's wrists, but he wasn't talking either.

"Paul," Voight looked at his friend of many years and asked him, "Where's Jackie?"

The grandfather just continued to shake his head and reiterated, "I don't know."

Alvin rolled Roger onto his back and tapped his face to get his attention and said to him, "Who did this?"

Roger just shook his head, his eyes wide in horror as he recalled, "I don't know, they just busted in here."

Voight hovered over Roger and asked him, "Where's Jackie, Roger?"

The 19-year-old slowly shook his head and told them in a horrified tone, "They got her."

"Erin," Voight got to his feet, "Stay with them and call in an ambo," he turned to Olinsky and told him, "Let's check the rest of the house."

"Right," Lindsay answered and reached for her radio to get help.

Voight and Olinsky drew their guns again and made a quick sweep of the rest of the downstairs before clearing it and they headed for the stairs. Voight seldom lost his cool but he was already seeing red and he just _wanted_ an excuse to pull the trigger on whoever was behind this. Upstairs the two men split up and took opposite ends of the hall, Voight pulled open the door at the end and saw it was the bathroom _and_ saw that it has been the scene of a struggle based on the still full bathtub of now freezing cold water and the large splash patterns left on the linoleum that seemed consistent with a body being dragged out of the tub against its will.

Olinsky came to a closed door and tried the knob and found it was unlocked, and actually, _just_ barely ajar, he threw the door halfway open and in a split second made out somebody in the room who turned and had something in hand and threw it towards him. He pulled the door shut again just in time to hear something shatter against it.

"Hank!" he called down the hall.

Voight spun on his heel and headed towards him, "You find her?"

"I think so," Alvin replied as he moved beside the door.

"Jackie!" Voight was across the hall in two strides and heard the sound of something else breaking behind the door, "It's Hank Voight, either open the door or I kick."

The sounds coming from the other side of the door suggested in no way that the 19-year-old girl was intent on doing what she'd been told.

"Cover me," Voight told Olinsky.

"You got it," Alvin replied.

Voight kicked the door in and charged Jackie and tackled her and pinned her to the bed. The girl that Voight had known for practically her whole life, had a wild look in her eyes like she didn't recognize him, and was making a bunch of animalistic grunts and growls and tried to fight him off of her. It was then while she was writhing around underneath him that Voight realized she was naked, not the first time he'd seen her like that, but _this_ was a new one on him. He reached over and grabbed an extra sheet that was cast aside on the bed and covered her with it. By now some of the fight was starting to leave Jackie though she still put up a struggle against Voight, who kept part of his weight pinned against her to make sure she didn't get loose. She was still in a state that she might hurt herself or someone else, and Hank voted for neither if it could be helped.

"Ambo's on the way," Alvin stepped into the room and told him.

"Good," Voight replied without turning to look at his partner, "I think we're going to have to get all of them tested to see if they've been drugged."

Jackie resisted less against Voight now but she still didn't make any sign of recognizing him, instead she was breathing hard and heavy, in a couple minutes she'd likely work herself up into a case of hyperventilation. Voight stared straight into her eyes as they glazed over and there was suddenly a hint of recognition in them.

"Voight?" she weakly asked.

Hank offered a small, albeit grim smile, and raised one hand to lightly stroke her head and told her, "It's alright, Jackie, it's going to be alright."

Off in the distance they could hear the sound of approaching sirens. Hopefully now they could get some answers about what had taken place there this morning, though Hank could already tell he wasn't going to like any of them.


	2. Chapter 2

After a few more minutes, Jackie finally came around and recognized Hank and Alvin, giving Voight the initiative to get off of her. She paid no attention to her state of undress and merely wrapped the sheet around her like a toga and got up and tried to explain what had happened.

"The paramedics are downstairs," Alvin told her, "They can check you out before they go to the hospital."

"I don't need anybody checking me out," Jackie insisted, "I'm fine."

"Of course you are," Voight murmured under his breath. Typical, he'd known Jackie since she was a little girl, she always denied needing help, and a lot of times that only got her into even more trouble than she was already in, quite a bit like her grandfather from what Voight knew of him.

"Jackie, I tried asking your grandfather, I tried asking your boyfriend, _what_ went on here?" Voight asked her.

"I really don't know," she replied as she padded over towards the window and looked out to the cop cars and ambulances parked in the street and driveway down below, "I was already in the tub with my head under water when somebody busted in and pulled me out."

It was always the hardest question to ask, but Olinsky managed to choke out, "What'd they do to you?"

The young woman pressed her back against the wall and made eye contact with them and explained, "He dragged me down the stairs and I saw Grandpa and Roger were already tied up, they'd already beaten both of them up, they kicked Grandpa a few more times for added measure when I was there to see it."

"What did they do to _you_?" Voight repeated Alvin's question.

Jackie eluded the question and just explained, "One of them started kicking Roger so I jumped on his back and tried to choke him, it didn't work, but there _was_ a struggle, for a minute I thought I was getting somewhere."

"How'd you wind up back up here?" Voight asked.

"One of them dragged me back up here," she gestured with outstretched arms, "To this room, and we were fighting, and he knocked my head against the wall and…" she pointed to the bed, "Against the headboard, and after that I just kind of blacked out. I was only starting to come to when you guys opened the door and that's why I started pitching things at you." It was obvious from her tone that she wasn't proud of herself for that choice of action.

Voight remained his usual deadpanned, nonchalant self as he told her, "It's alright, no damage there."

"I know what you're trying to get at, Hank," Jackie folded her arms against her chest and told him, "I wasn't raped, and I'm not going to the hospital and I'm not getting a rape kit done."

"You just said you blacked out, how can you be sure?" he wanted to know.

"I would _know_ , Voight," Jackie replied.

This sudden comment raised his eyebrows slightly, " _How_ would you know?"

It was obvious from the look on her face that she did not appreciate his persistent questions, she shook her head slowly and said to him, "You're _really_ going to make me spell it out for you, aren't you?"

"Humor me," he told her without missing a beat, "How would you know?"

Jackie gritted her teeth and shot him a 'you asked for it' look and said point blank, "Because my idea of good sex is by myself!"

All of a sudden Olinsky was wishing he was _anywhere_ else but here, despite the seriousness of the current situation he raised a hand and hid his face behind it, both because of the awkwardness and because he was just about to start laughing. Without making eye contact with Jackie, he told Voight, "I'm going to go see what the medics know, Hank," and exited the room.

"Hank," Erin's voice bounced off the walls as she came up the stairs and appeared in the doorway, "Hank, the medics want to talk to you."

"Alright, I'm coming," Voight left the room and murmured into Lindsay's ear on the way, "See if you can get her to agree to come peacefully, we got to get her examined."

Erin nodded and entered the room and now it was just the two women.

"Hey Jackie," she said. This was awkward for her because she'd never had much communication with the Lynch family as long as Voight had known them, add to the fact that Jackie was 10 years younger than her and Erin never had _any_ idea what to talk to her about, let alone _how_ to talk to her.

Jackie kept a grip on the sheet she was wearing and flatly replied, "Hello, Erin, and no I'm _not_ getting a rape kit done."

She shrugged her shoulders and told the younger woman, "I didn't say anything about one."

"Doesn't matter," Jackie replied, "That's _why_ you're here, women cops for women victims, make them feel more comfortable, make them open up more, let them know they're not alone and that they don't have to go through this whole grueling, demeaning process alone."

Erin made a small sound of mild amusement and cocked her head to one side and said, "That's right, you grew up around cops, didn't you?"

"Yep," Jackie answered without missing a beat, "I practically grew up at District 21, I know every play in the book, and I'm _still_ not going."

Alvin came back up the stairs and reentered the room and told Jackie, "The medics say they're going to have to take Paul and Roger to the hospital, looks like they both sustained concussions during the attack."

"As hard as those bastards were kicking, I'm not surprised," Jackie said. Then she did a double take and said to Olinsky, "Roger? They're taking Roger to the hospital?"

"Yeah," Alvin answered, not getting what she was freaking out about, "They're going to do thorough exams on both of them to make sure there's no internal bleeding or…"

Jackie pushed past him and was out the door like a shot from a gun.

"What's that about?" Erin asked Olinsky.

He looked at her and answered with a shake of his head, "I don't know but we better find out." And the two cops from Intelligence followed her down the stairs.

* * *

Downstairs was complete pandemonium because the paramedics were trying to assess the conditions of both men, asking them both questions about what had happened and about any pre-existing medical conditions they may have as well as their overall medical history, all the while Paul Lynch was trying to talk to Voight, Voight was trying to get answers out of his friend of over 20 years, and Roger was deflecting most questions with a response of temporary amnesia or something to that effect.

Voight looked at Paul and tried to remain his usual hard as nails self but it was difficult because this was an old friend of his and now that the sergeant had a better chance to actually look at his friend, he could see all the bruises and cuts that he hadn't had time to notice earlier. Paul Lynch was a man little over six feet tall who had always been slightly built but in pretty good shape throughout his life, even now in his older age when his dark hair was starting to go light in spots. Whoever broke in did a real number on his friend, and Voight knew this was a blow to Paul's ego since he prided himself of being able to handle anything back in the day. But it also hit Voight hard because he'd known this family a long time and he'd seen Paul in and through a lot of scrapes, but never one where the old man came out looking like this.

Then in the midst of all this confusion, Jackie came stampeding down the stairs and charging into the room looking like she just escaped from a toga party and practically climbed over EMS to get to her grandfather and her boyfriend.

"Grandpa!" she dropped down by Paul's gurney first since he was the closest, by now his face was half purple from his assault and he suddenly looked so much more older and fragile than he had earlier that morning, "Grandpa, are you alright?"

Voight watched as his friend took in his granddaughter's own appearance, which was notably better than his own since she seemed to have very few marks on her by comparison, but it was still clear what had happened had injured him far more than just physically as he loosely wrapped one arm around Jackie and said weakly, "Jackie, what did they do to you?"

"Grandpa, I'm fine," she insisted as she tried to hug her grandfather without further injuring him.

Jackie ignored the comments of the medics who tried to get her to get out of their way and let them work, the only further sound that got her attention was an escaped groan from Roger and she made her way over to the gurney he was laid out on in one move and was practically on top of him.

"Roger," she took in her boyfriend's likewise battered appearance, and Voight noticed she became noticeably shaken by his current state, but she told him, "You're going to be alright, Roger," she went down on one knee and wrapped her arms under his back and pulled him up towards her and told him, "I'm going to go with you to the hospital and make sure nothing happens."

Somebody put their hand on her and she shot to her feet and spun around, it was Alvin.

"If you want to go, that's fine, but don't you think you should get some clothes on first?" he felt a need to point out.

Jackie looked down and took in her appearance and seemed to seriously debate it for a minute before she finally decided, "Fine", and zipped back upstairs to get a change of clothes.

Voight turned his attention to one of the paramedics and asked her about Paul's condition, "How bad is he?"

"Most of it looks superficial but we're picking up some irregular heart activity, we're going to take him to the hospital for some tests and possible observation."

"No!" Paul insisted as he tried to get up, "I don't need to go to the hospital, I'll be fine."

"Paul," Voight knelt down beside his friend and met his eyes and told the older man with full sincerity, "Don't make me hurt you, and you know I _will_ if you don't cooperate with these people."

"Hank, it's nothing major," Paul told his friend, "Of course my heart's irregular, yours would be too if this happened to you."

"Believe me, I've been there," Voight replied, "You still gotta let the medics do their job." He looked to the EMTs and told them, "Load him up."

Paul reached out a bruised and possibly sprained wrist and grabbed Voight by his vest, "Hank…"

Voight was not unsympathetic to his friend's wishes to be left alone, but he knew it wasn't an option. He knelt down close to his friend and told him, "Paul, Jackie's going to ride with Roger to the hospital, I'm going to ride with you, it'll be alright."

"Hank, you don't understand," Paul said weakly to his friend.

"I think I do," Voight told his friend, "And what I don't, I intend to find out. Paul, _what_ can you tell me about the guys that did this?"

Paul looked to the side for a minute as if he was trying to decide how to answer, then he turned back toward Voight and told him, "There were three of them."

Two attending paramedics got him strapped down and raised the gurney up and wheeled him towards the front door. Voight followed behind them. Alvin and Erin followed him out the door.

"Canvassing's going to be a waste of time," Voight said, "Nobody's home, nobody saw anything."

"Nobody except these three and they're all pretty tight lipped," Alvin noted.

"We'll loosen their lips," Voight told the other two cops simply.

"We'll meet you at the hospital," Erin told him.

Voight went over to the first ambulance as the medics got Paul loaded up for the ride, he stepped in the back as they closed it up. Once they started moving, Voight crouched down beside Paul and said to him, "Alright, Paul, walk me through what went on this morning, how long ago were you attacked?"

His friend just looked at the ambulance ceiling and shook his head, "What can I tell you, Hank? It started off like just any other morning. I'd already been up for a while, the kids were just coming around, Jackie was upstairs taking a bath, I was getting started on breakfast…I never heard them come in, all of a sudden they were just _there_ …by the time they got me, they'd already got Roger and had him on the floor and were kicking him…I tried to stop them… _tried_ to do something…" his wounded pride shone clear through now as he forced himself to continue, "I couldn't do _anything_."

"Then they started beating you?" Voight asked him.

Paul acted like Voight hadn't even asked the question, as though his own assault didn't matter. "One of them left the room, and I _knew_ he was going upstairs to get Jackie…I couldn't stop it…"

"Paul," Voight would've liked nothing more than to _not_ have to ask this question right now, but he had to, "What did they do to Jackie?"

The older man feebly shook his head, "I don't know what happened once they left the living room…"

"She says she wasn't raped," Voight told him, which brought a minor look of relief to the grandfather's face, but Voight added, "But does that match up with what you _were_ able to see?"

The older Lynch struggled with this question for a moment before answering, "I'm not sure, it all happened so fast…she was trying to get them to stop attacking _us_ , she jumped on one of them but…it's a blur after that."

Voight offered a small smile and tried to be reassuring, "She's a tough broad, she gets it from you."

Paul rolled his eyes back in his head and turned to the side for a second, right now it was too painful for the old man to actually laugh.

"Everything's going to be alright, Paul, you got my word on that," Voight promised his friend.

* * *

Trudy used her free hand to brace herself against her desk as she listened to the news being reported back to her over the phone. She took it in and forced her breathing to work its way back from a borderline panic attack to a more normal range.

"Alright," she said, dazedly, "I'll be right down…will you tell him that I'll be right down? Okay."

She hung up the phone and took a minute to compose herself. Voight had called to let her know what had been going on, first because he knew that she used to date Paul Lynch several years ago when they were both younger and more attractive, and though things hadn't worked out there, she still had strong feelings for the man. Voight knew all this and decided she had a right to know before it got all the way around Chicago. Secondly, he'd called because he'd assured Paul that he was, in his own words, 'going to bring in the whole troop'. Trudy buzzed upstairs and waited for a response, it felt like forever before somebody came back.

"What's up, Sarge?" Antonio's voice came through with a static ring to it.

"Dawson, get everyone up there rounded up and get your asses down here now," Trudy told him, "Voight just called in an emergency, he wants everyone to meet him at Chicago Med _now_."

Antonio's voice came back, "What kind of emergency?"

"He will explain it when you get there now _move it_ , that's a direct order from Hank," Trudy shot back.

Trudy took another minute to compose herself. This just felt like she'd fallen down the rabbit hole. She'd known Paul almost as long as Voight had, but about halfway through that timeline she'd gotten to know him a lot more personally than Voight had. During some of their pillow talk sessions, he had a lot of stories to tell about when he was younger and served in Vietnam, some of the kills he'd been forced to make, but he'd been good at it; that was a lifetime ago but he still seemed so…invincible, indestructible, Trudy really didn't think there was a person alive dumb enough to try messing with him, especially since he was largely a private man now who kept to himself and didn't draw attention to himself. And now he was in the hospital after a home invasion, him _and_ his granddaughter _and_ her boyfriend. Trudy's legs were turning to jelly and she had to use both hands to steady herself and stand straight.

Burgess and Roman just entered the house, as they neared her desk, Trudy cut them off at the pass and bellowed at them, "Burgess, you're on desk duty."

Kim did a double take, "Excuse me, Sergeant?"

" _My_ desk," Trudy answered as she picked up her jacket and swung it around her body, "I have to meet Voight at the hospital, take over here."

Kim did another double take and said slowly, unsure if this was a test or not, "A—alright, Sergeant….ah…will do."

They waited until Trudy was out of earshot to say anything.

"Is she serious?" Roman asked.

"I…" Burgess shrugged, "I guess so."

"Huh, I wonder what's so important that she had to leave?" Roman asked, then looked to the stairs and added, "Uh-oh."

Kim turned to see the door separating the upstairs from the downstairs open and Dawson, Halstead, Ruzek and Atwater all came down and headed for the door. She turned towards Roman and asked him, "What do you think it is?"

Sean shook his head, "I don't know, but it doesn't look good."


	3. Chapter 3

As everybody got ready to roll out, Halstead happened to catch a name from Trudy in passing. He got partnered with Antonio and on the drive to the hospital he asked Dawson, "So who's this Lynch guy?"

"Old pal of Voight's," Antonio answered, "They've known each other as long as I've worked in the district, probably longer than that."

Halstead looked towards Dawson and asked, "What kind of a guy is he?"

Antonio chewed on that for a minute before answering, "He's a good guy once you get to know him… _if_ you get to know him."

That caught Halstead's attention, " _If_?"

"He doesn't socialize much with everybody in the station," Dawson explained, "Two cops he's closest to are Voight and Platt, after that the guy tends to keep to himself."

Halstead mused on this for a few seconds and noted, "Platt seems pretty shaken up."

"Well she used to date the guy," Antonio told him.

Halstead turned to the window on his side and slowly replied, "No comment." Then he added, "So what do you think happened?"

"I don't know," Dawson replied, "Gotta be bad, whatever it is."

Cynically Halstead murmured under his breath, "And the wrath of the almighty Voight comes down again."

Dawson glanced at his partner and inquired, "You got a problem with Voight?"

"Let's just say there're still some things about how he runs his 'house' that I don't understand," Halstead replied.

"Stick around long enough, you _will_ ," Antonio told him.

"I wonder," Halstead said more to himself than the man driving the car.

* * *

Voight stood by Paul's bedside in the hospital room the older man had been assigned to. The doctors were still waiting for some test results but thus far said things were looking good, but they didn't see any point in taking chances. Hank leaned back against the wall, and in his mind went back a couple months, when he'd gone to New York and enlisted Olivia Benson's help to find Jackie. His mind started reeling as he remembered the conversations he'd had with her about this family.

 _"This is not an official case, I'm doing this as a favor to a friend. This is Jackie Lynch, 19 years old, between you and me, I think she mentally checked out a few years before," Voight explained, "I've known her for most of her life, I've known her grandfather longer than that. She's missing and I'm doing this as a favor to him. She's an unusual girl," Voight told her, "There's always been some kind of a brick wall between her and the rest of the world, nobody's ever been able to get any full answers out of her."_

 _"Not even you?" Olivia asked teasingly._

 _"Not even Granddad, and he's about the most important person in her life," Hank explained, "All she left behind were a set of frantic parents, and a boyfriend, one Roger Murdock, nice kid, not too bright, she was the brains of that particular outfit._ _It's no secret that that boy's whole household is the living definition of dysfunctional, but nobody wants to get involved, nobody wants to file any charges. Story of the mother's life," Voight said, "I try to help but she doesn't want any part of it. And her boy is too scared to speak up either, even now that he's grown. I think she tried to kill her boyfriend's father."_

 _"She's his protector."_

 _"Seems to be," Voight said, "The family he comes from, it just kind of makes sense he's not all there, you know?"_

 _"How seriously involved are they?" Olivia asked._

 _"I think boyfriend is a loose term," Voight said, "I think there's more intimacy between the two of_ _us_ _than there is between the two of them."_

 _"What about her parents?" Olivia asked, "Are you close with them too?"_

 _Hank shook his head, "I know them but we've never been particularly close, enough to make small talk but not much past that."_

 _Jackie met his gaze and explained, "Anytime you as a kid try to tell your parents that somebody did something that you didn't like,_ _you're_ _the one who gets in trouble even if you never do anything. I wasn't about to tell them about_ _that_ _. If I were to tell them now, then there'd be all that outrage, and_ _hurt_ _of_ _why_ _I didn't_ _trust_ _them enough to tell them before. It's a can of worms best left sealed shut. I couldn't tell Roger about any of this."_

 _"Why didn't you let him know what was going on?" Voight asked, "You had_ _everybody_ _worried: Roger, your parents, your grandfather,_ _me_ _."_

 _"Do you have any idea what that would do to his psyche? He's already scared to death of his father, he couldn't go up against him_ _or_ _Garson, and if he knew this he'd feel an obligation to because he's a good guy."_

" _Some cop…what is it they always say? You always ignore what's going on right under your nose."_

 _"Maybe it was just having you be around her when she needed it," Olivia thought, "As long as you were_ _there_ _, she knew nothing would happen, even if she didn't think she could tell you what was wrong."_

 _Voight looked at Olivia and asked, more to himself than to her, "Why didn't she ever tell me?"_

 _Olivia sat down beside Voight and told him, "I think I know what Jackie meant when she said you were the only one she could depend on."_

 _"Oh yeah?" Voight asked._

 _Olivia nodded and told him, "It's very easy to feel safe with you around."_

 _"That's me," Voight replied as he took another swig of his beer, "The trusty attack dog."_

Voight looked down at his friend and saw the man was currently bearing resemblance to a beaten dog that couldn't figure out where to turn now. In his mind, Hank couldn't make heads or tails of what had taken place that morning. True Chicago was a dangerous place for _anyone_ to live, nobody was immune, but he never thought that he'd see one of his oldest friends in a predicament like this, it still seemed surreal even though he knew it was true.

"As soon as things get calmed down, we got to get a full story out of everybody about what happened," Voight told his friend, "I got Alvin keeping an eye on the kids, so I'm going to start with you."

"I told you before, Hank," Paul insisted, "It happened too fast, I couldn't do anything about it, I don't know what happened afterwards or even when it all ended."

"But you know more than you're telling me," he pointed out, "We've been friends for a long time, Paul, so don't start lying to me now."

Paul looked up at the police sergeant and asked, "Lying about what?"

"This wasn't a random break-in, it was too personal," Voight told him, "Whoever it was wanted to make sure you _saw_ what happened to the kids _and_ that you couldn't do anything about it."

The older man's face scrunched up in a pain more emotional than physical and he turned his head to the side to look away from his friend. It was obvious that if that _was_ the intruders' plan, it had worked.

Voight placed a consoling hand on his friend's shoulder and told him, "Paul, nobody's blaming you for what happened, _I_ don't blame you, I know Jackie doesn't blame you, everybody knows this wasn't your fault, whoever did this _knew_ what they were doing."

"Hank," the older man choked out in a half sob, "You don't know what it's like to watch your own granddaughter get assaulted, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Voight picked his hand up off Paul's shoulder and instead placed it on top of the grieving man's head and carefully stroked it as he had with Jackie earlier that morning. "Not a grandchild, but I _do_ know what it's like to have somebody get the drop on you, and have to watch someone you love get tortured and their life threatened, and not being able to do a damn thing to stop it. I _know_ , Paul, I know. Just _tell me_ what happened so we can find the bastards who did this."

But the older man still couldn't bring himself to fill Voight in on anymore of the details than he already had.

"Paul," Voight said to the man in a combined soft and firm tone, one he'd had to use on the man's granddaughter a few times before, "I'm not going to lose any respect for you, but just be straight with me, are you in any trouble?"

Paul turned towards Voight and asked him, "What do you mean?"

"Three guys bust into the house, as far as we can tell they don't take anything, just round the three of you up for a beatdown, it sounds like somebody might've sent them, maybe to send a message? Now I happen to know the kids can't be involved in anything that would warrant that…what about you?"

Lynch shook his head, "I never got involved with _nothing_ that somebody would take it out on the kids, you ought to know that, Hank."

"As much as I'd like to be exceptional about this," Voight told the older man, "I'm going to have to treat this like any other case. Whatever happened in that house, Jackie refuses to leave Roger's side and we've _got_ to get her out of his room, get _her_ examined by a doctor, see if maybe she managed to get a piece of any of these guys under her nails. She's refusing a rape kit, she says she wasn't raped, I'm hoping she wasn't, I'm glad if she wasn't, if she doesn't want the test done that's her right but we still got to get her examined _and_ we got to split the two of them up and see what they can tell us about the attack. Paul, you're the person Jackie respects more than anyone else, do you have any kind of pull with her to get her to cooperate?"

Paul looked at him uncertainly and replied, "After what happened this morning, Hank, I doubt it very much."

From out in the hallway they could hear a distant voice calling out, _"Paul? Paul!"_

"Oh good, your old girlfriend's here," Voight said to his friend with a _small_ knowing smirk.

Trudy's voice became louder as it bounced off the walls as she came closer to the room, calling Lynch's name. Voight went over to the door to show her in, Trudy made a beeline over to the bed and just about fell on her knees as she came to a sudden stop.

"Oh my God, Paul, what happened?" Trudy asked as she looked at the bruised and battered state of her ex-boyfriend, "Are you alright?"

He was adamant, or tried to be, "It's nothing, Trudy, I'm fine."

"The doctors are still running tests," Voight told his desk sergeant, "But the general consensus is it looks worse than it is and he should be fine."

"Oh," Trudy made a sound like she was about to collapse on the floor and faint, instead she hugged Paul and murmured into the crook of his neck, "Thank God."

Paul offered a weak smile and tried to sound his usual self as he said to her, "It's good to see you again, too, Trudy."

"Paul," Trudy got off her knees and sat on the side rail on Paul's bed and told him, "I want you know we've got all of Intelligence on this case and we're going to find the SOBs responsible and nail them to the wall."

A weak, pained laugh escaped Paul as he managed to latch one arm around Trudy's shoulders and commented, "That's the Trudy I used to go crazy for."

Trudy smiled sheepishly and Voight would've sworn he saw a hint of color in her cheeks.

"Trudy, I'm glad you're here," Hank told her, "I need you to stay here with Paul while I try and get the details of what happened out of Roger and Jackie."

"Are they alright?" Trudy asked, "Where are they?"

"Roger looks a lot like Paul right now, I haven't heard what his status is," Voight told her, "Jackie seems to be fairing better than both of them right now, but none of them are talking, and so far nobody's been able to pry the two of them apart for anything."

"Hank," Trudy moved off the bed and went over to the door and told him, "Let me try talking to them first…" she leaned in towards him and confided in him, "Jackie and I speak a lot of the same language, I might be able to get her to crack."

Voight looked at Paul and thought it over and told Trudy, "Alright, see what you can find out, if they don't start talking, I'm coming in."


	4. Chapter 4

Trudy found the room that Roger had been put in and lightly knocked before showing herself in anyway. Immediately she saw Roger in the bed and Jackie seated on the edge of it hovering over him like a vulture.

"Hey guys," she said in a low, concerned tone as she closed the door behind her, "Are you guys okay?"

"We're fine, Trudy," Jackie answered almost automatically as she raised one hand and absentmindedly ran it through Roger's hair.

Trudy exhaled loudly and told them, "I'm so relieved, Hank called me, he told me you all had been attacked, I was so worried, I rushed right over."

"You mean you were worried about Grandpa and came to see how _he's_ doing," Jackie replied with a small but telling smirk on her face.

"Are you sure you're okay?" Trudy asked as she went over to the bed to get a better look at them.

"Well," Jackie pointed at Roger and told the desk sergeant, "We're still waiting to hear back on his test results, but yeah, we're fine."

Trudy slowly nodded and asked Jackie, "What happened?"

"Three guys got in the house and ambushed us," Jackie said, "That's about all there is to tell. First they got Roger and Grandpa because they were downstairs, then they came up and got me, they tied Grandpa and Roger up in the living room and beat the hell out of them."

"And you too. Did the doctor see you yet?" Trudy asked.

"I don't need to see a doctor," Jackie told her.

"You mean _you_ weren't attacked?" Trudy asked.

"Well yeah, I mean they tried," Jackie said, "But I was able to fight back."

Trudy looked at her like she was an alien and she said to the girl, "Jackie, you might've gotten a piece of them then, you gotta let the doctors check under your nails."

"What nails? I don't _have_ any nails," Jackie held up her hand and showed her nails were cut short like the guys'.

"You still might've got their DNA, Jackie that could answer this whole thing," Trudy told her, "You've _got_ to let them check."

Jackie shook her head and gestured to Roger and told Trudy, "I'm not leaving him."

"Jackie, this is serious," Trudy said low under his breath to the girl, " _I'll_ stay with him until you get back."

"A tempting offer, Trudy," Jackie said, "But I'm staying."

Trudy less than subtly reached over and grabbed Jackie's shoulder and said to her as though she had a choice, "Can I see you over _here_ for a minute?" and walked Jackie over towards the door so Roger couldn't eavesdrop on them.

"Jackie," Trudy said to the girl in a low and notably firmer tone, more her regular 'no nonsense' tone she reserved for Burgess and Roman when they honked her off, "You remember what I told you a couple months ago? That if anybody messed with you, just let me know and I would help Voight get rid of the body? That offer's still good, so if there's anything I need to know, just tell me now and I'll handle it."

"Trudy," Jackie pushed the woman's hand off of her and told her, "I appreciate it, I really do, you have _no_ idea how much I do…but I wasn't raped, and I'm not getting the kit done."

"I didn't say anything about a rape kit," Trudy told her as she grabbed Jackie's shirt to maintain her attention, "You just level with me if anything happened and _I'll_ take care of it myself."

"Again," Jackie said as she peeled Trudy's hand off of her, "I appreciate it, but I'm telling you _nothing_ happened."

"If nothing happened, why don't you want the doctors to look at you?" Trudy asked.

"Because it's none of their damn business," Jackie answered.

"But everything could be cleared up so quickly," Trudy mentioned.

"I don't care," Jackie shook her head, "I'm staying right _here_."

* * *

"Sorry, Hank," Trudy told the sergeant when they regrouped out in the hall, "That girl is not budging."

"None of them are," Olinsky added, "They're all sticking to very condensed accounts of what happened."

"And you can't budge Jackie away from that boy with a pry bar," Trudy told Hank, "I don't get it."

"I don't get any of it," Ruzek said.

"It's simple," Voight told them, "They're all feeling guilty, Paul because he couldn't protect the kids, Roger because they dragged Jackie down the stairs naked and made him watch what they did to her and he couldn't stop it…"

"And Jackie?" Erin asked.

Hank turned to her and answered, "She probably feels guilty because she wasn't able to stop the attack even though she was the only one _not_ tied up. _Or_ because she _was_ taken back upstairs and wasn't able to help when the men were beat up again."

"But it wasn't _any_ of their faults," Erin said.

Voight nodded slowly and told her, "That's the great thing about guilt, it never has to make sense, that's why I don't bother with it."

"Jackie _was_ the only one able to fight back, she _might_ have DNA on her from the attacker but she won't go to the doctor to get checked," Alvin said.

"She's 19," Voight said, looking to his men one by one, "That means she's an adult…so the kid gloves come off."

* * *

Trudy went back to Roger's room and sure enough, Jackie was still seated by his bedside.

"Jackie, you know I don't want to be the bad guy—"

"Since when?" Jackie asked the desk sergeant.

Trudy paused, and let that one go, and continued with what she was originally going to say, "But if you don't agree to let the doctor look at you, you're going to force me to take drastic measures."

The two teenagers looked to each other, then Jackie looked back at the sergeant and replied, "Sorry, Trudy, but I'm afraid I'm immune to your threats."

Trudy returned to her regular hard ass self typically reserved for chewing out patrolmen's asses, and told the girl, "Alright, Jackie, you leave me no choice." She turned to the door and hollered, "Ruzek! Atwater!"

The door opened and the two men from the 21st District stepped in looking like enforcers from the mafia.

"What the hell is this?" Jackie demanded to know as she shot up from the bed.

Voight stepped in behind them and answered, "You want to play hardball, that's exactly what we're going to do."

"Forget it," Jackie told them, "I'm not leaving."

"Sorry," Voight remarked simply, "That's not an option."

Atwater and Ruzek cornered her and grabbed her by either side and started forcibly moving her towards the door, Jackie struggled against them and dragged her feet like they were dragging her off to the electric chair, she balled her hands into fists and tried to beat the two cops hauling her off.

"Keep the hands clear," Ruzek told Atwater as he grabbed her right wrist and kept it suspended above her head, "Don't let her scratch you, we don't need any cross contamination if they lift DNA off them."

"I hear that," Atwater replied as he grabbed her other wrist and held it high above her head.

It made for a more awkward trip out of the room but they managed to push Jackie out the door and down the hospital corridor, with her screaming blue murder and trying to kick them the entire way. Hank and Trudy watched this unfold from where they remained in the hospital room.

Roger tried to get up and asked Voight, "Where're they taking her?"

Voight was over to the bed in two steps and pushed Roger back down, he didn't need two of them trying to make a break for it.

"The doctor's going to examine her and make sure nothing's wrong," Hank told the boy, "Won't take long, she could've saved everybody trouble by doing it when she first came in."

Trudy was gone now, it was just the two of them and that's the way Voight wanted it. He leaned over the bedside and said in a slightly quieter voice than usual, "Roger, you know better than to lie to me, so don't start now. I need to know exactly _what_ happened today."

The 19 year old drew his bottom lip into his mouth and bit his top teeth into the skin underneath. Voight could see how difficult this was for him, and he would swear he could almost _hear_ Roger's heartbeat start to speed up as he was met with the task of reliving their attack.

"Roger," Voight softened his tone slightly, "This was not your fault, this was not anybody's fault, _you_ did not do this, _they_ did, okay?" he forced the boy to maintain eye contact with him and he added, "We're going to catch the people that did this but I need you to tell me everything you _can_."

He merely nodded, and after a brief pause, started to explain, "We'd just gotten up, Jackie went to take a bath and I went downstairs. Her grandpa was in the kitchen and I was in the living room just getting the blinds open, and out of nowhere I felt something hit me in the back of the head."

"You didn't hear anybody come in?" Voight asked.

Roger shook his head, "I was stunned, I tried to do something, I couldn't, I couldn't even make a sound. The next thing I know, I'm on the floor and they're dragging her grandpa out of the kitchen and they knock him on the floor too."

"What did they look like?"

"I don't know," Roger answered, "They were all dressed in black, they had…masks on."

"What, ski masks?"

"Yeah."

Voight nodded slowly and asked him, "Were they armed?"

The boy sucked in an anxious breath and nodded his head vigorously. "One of them for sure…h-he-he held a gun on me while the third one went up to get Jackie."

Voight knew this was getting increasingly hard for Roger to deal with, but he maintained his professional unreadable expression and pressed on, and asked him, "What happened when they brought Jackie down?"

Roger's eyes looked to the ceiling as he recounted, "They threw her down on the floor next to me…I tried not to look at her because it wasn't right…they flipped me over and started kicking me, I was already tied up and gagged, I couldn't _do_ anything to stop it…then…then…" with each passing word Roger started breathing faster and heavier and now he seemed to be nearing hyperventilating.

"Take it easy," Voight told him as he placed a strong hand on the boy's shoulder to bring him back to the here and now, "Calm down."

Instead, Roger's breathing became more ragged and strained, and he looked like he was about to go into a full panic attack. Suddenly, they heard a muffled voice call out from somewhere down the hall.

" _Roger? Roger!"_

Voight knew that voice anywhere, it was Roger's mother. At this rate they were going to have the whole city in this hospital looking for people.

The door opened as the mousy middle aged woman Voight knew to be Cassie Murdock, a woman he'd known for several years, ran straight into it; shaking it off she made a beeline straight for Roger's bed and all but collapsed at his side.

"Roger, oh my God! Are you alright? What happened?"

Typical mothers, it never mattered how old their kid got, as soon as they got hurt every mother became just the same whether her son was 2 or 20. Voight stood back and watched the melancholic reunion of mother and son as Cassie instantly burst into tears upon seeing her son's battered appearance, and over her hysterical sobs tried to ask what had happened, and Roger tried to explain but his mother's hysterics coupled with his own trauma sent him over the edge and he broke down crying too, each seemed to mirror the other perfectly as Cassie pressed her forehead against her son's and placed one hand on the back of his head to pull him closer to her, and Voight knew he wasn't going to be getting anymore answers out of Roger anytime soon.

* * *

Cassie Murdock stood outside Roger's hospital room and tried to compose herself, she half hyperventilated into a Kleenex before dabbing it on her face. Voight stood half leaned against the wall and told her, "I'm sorry this happened, Cassie."

"I," she struggled to catch her breath again, "I came as soon as I got your message…how could this happen to Roger? _Who_ would do this to him?"

"That's what I intend to find out," Voight told her, "But first I need them to tell me what happened…Cassie, how long has Roger been living with them?"

She sucked in a shaky breath and her eyes looked towards the ceiling as she answered, "After…after what happened…" meaning the last incident regarding Roger's father, "Roger told me he thought it would be best for both of us if…there was some space between us and we had…" she dabbed her Kleenex at one eye, "Some room to take in everything that had happened."

Voight just nodded, but to himself he considered the two options, that either one, Roger had suddenly gotten a lot smarter to actually think of such a thing, or once again it was Jackie's thoughts being parroted out of his mouth. Like he'd told Olivia, Roger was a nice kid but not very bright, Jackie was always the mastermind there. Speaking of which, he thought…uh oh.

* * *

"There, all done, now was that so bad?" the doctor asked as he put his supplies away.

"Perfectly painless," Ruzek answered as he rolled his sleeve down over the gauze covering his wrist.

"Didn't feel a thing," Atwater added as he glanced down at his own bandaged arm.

The door opened and Voight started in, then when he saw the condition of his two men, he stopped in the doorway and told them, "Sorry, guess I should've warned you first."

"You knew this was going to happen?" Ruzek asked.

"I had a rough idea," Hank answered, and looked around, "Where _is_ Jackie?"

"I finished with her ten minutes ago," the doctor told him, "She left."

"Probably went back to check on Roger," Voight said as he stepped into the room and told the officers, "The last time Jackie Lynch was brought to a hospital, she nearly killed three of the medical staff examining her _after_ she'd been beaten to an unconscious pulp." Well, last time in Chicago anyway, Voight didn't count the brief trip they took to the hospital in New York, he explained to his men, "She does _not_ do well in a medical environment, something about it tends to set her off," he turned to the doctor and asked him, " _Is_ she good enough to check out?"

"I was just told to collect samples for DNA, that's anybody's guess," the doctor told him, "All the same, I highly recommend it, all she's doing is making all the other patients in this place nervous, and we _do_ have other patients in this hospital to tend to, ones in more _immediate_ need of medical care."

"What about the boy?" Voight asked.

"I spoke with his doctor," he answered, "Looks bad but that's mainly superficial…off the record I'd give them both the green light to go home, but the grandfather we want to keep overnight for observation, his heart's still misbehaving."

"They can't go home," Voight said, "The house is still a crime scene."

"So now what?" Ruzek asked.

Hardly missing a beat, Voight answered, "I'll take them home with me for the night, they know the house, and at least that way I'll know where they are."

* * *

"You don't think Voight's overdoing this a bit?" Halstead asked Antonio as the two Intelligence detectives stood leaning against the wall in the waiting room, keeping an eye on everyone who entered the front doors.

"What do you mean?" Antonio asked.

"Security detail?" Halstead asked, "I think it's a bit much. Sounds paranoid to me."

"Is he?" Antonio asked as he cocked his head towards Jay, "We're chasing three ghosts right now, man, we don't have any idea who those guys were, where they are, what they look like, if they're going to come back, if they're going to try killing these people…there's something very bizarre about the whole thing, and until we know what it actually is, I don't think we can afford to take any chances."

"So what're we watching for?" Halstead asked.

Antonio shrugged, "Just keep an eye out if anyone tries going to their rooms."

"But you're sure that that woman _was_ Roger's mom?" Halstead asked.

"I have kids, if anything ever happened to them and I had to come here and find them…" Dawson left the rest of that thought unvoiced and said simply, "I don't think anybody could _fake_ it that convincingly."

"But you don't know?" Halstead asked.

"No, but Voight knows her, if it wasn't his mom, he would've let us know," Antonio told him.

"He called her?"

"Yeah, she's the kid's mom, she has a right to know," Dawson answered.

Jay chewed on that for a minute and asked, "Do you think Voight also called the Lynch family?"

"That's a safe bet," Antonio said.

"Okay…" Halstead waited, figuring Antonio would catch on to his question without him having to actually say it, but when Dawson didn't make any sign of recognition of what Jay was talking about, he asked him, "So… _where_ are they? They've got their daughter _and_ their dad in here, why didn't _they_ come?"

Dawson thought about the answer to that one for a minute and could only sum it up, "Not every family's a good one." He looked at Jay and asked the man point blank, "I mean come on, why do you think she was living with her grandfather of all people in the first place if her parents were still alive?"

"What happened?" Halstead wanted to know.

Antonio shrugged, "You'd have to talk to Voight about it. All I know is _both_ of these families' got problems."

"Yeah but Roger's mom came for _him_ ," Jay said.

Antonio nodded, "That's because _she_ cared about what happened to her kid."

Jay was still having trouble wrapping his head around this, "Their own daughter gets attacked, _and_ their dad, and they _don't_ care about either of them?"

"Well you said it yourself," Antonio gestured to the front doors, " _Where_ are they if they care so much?"

Halstead looked to the entrance cluelessly, and asked him, "So what happens now?"


	5. Chapter 5

"We ran a tox-screen on the boy and the grandfather like you requested," Will Halstead told Voight as he met with the sergeant in the corridor, and flipped a sheet over on a clipboard, "Now you understand it's a physical impossibility to run a test for _every_ possible drug since there aren't enough samples in a human body to do that."

"Get to the point, Halstead," Voight told him.

"Nothing," the doctor shook his head, "We didn't find any alcohol, prescriptions, street drugs, no GHB, nothing. As far as I can tell you, they weren't drugged, just beaten unconscious or somewhere near that point."

"And Jackie too," Voight observed.

Oh," Will pressed his thumb towards a particular line on the paper and said, "I thought it would also be worth mentioning they didn't find any medications in the grandfather's system."

"That's because he doesn't take any," Voight told Halstead.

Will looked up from the clipboard and asked him, "Seriously? How old is he?"

"Old enough," Hank answered.

"That's what I thought," Will replied, "And with that in mind, he's a lucky man."

"I always thought so," Voight told him, albeit for different reasons.

"I'll keep you posted if we find any DNA but to be perfectly honest, I think it's a dead end," Will mentioned.

Voight just nodded and answered, "We had to try. So what's your final verdict?"

Will shrugged and told the cop, "The kids can go home, we'll keep Grandpa a day or so and make sure his heart's up to it, but so far all things are looking up."

Voight looked at the young doctor and told him, "For _your_ side, now _I've_ got to figure out what happened and I have three eyewitnesses who aren't talking."

"Sorry I can't help you there, Voight," Will said, "If there was any truth to sodium amytal as a truth serum, I'd happily stick all three of them with it…maybe more than once."

Voight forced a small smile and told him, "I appreciate it, Halstead, you're a good man."

"Thanks, I wish there was something else I could do to help you guys out."

"Just keep me posted if you find anything, _and_ let me know if anyone else is brought in with similar injuries," Voight told Will, "There's a possibility this wasn't personal and whoever did this could do it to someone else, if so we have to know so we can establish that pattern."

"You got it," Will replied.

"Do me a favor," Voight said to the doctor, "Hold off on telling the kids they're discharged, I have a couple things I need to take care of first."

"No sweat," Will said, "I have other patients to tend to, _then_ I'll tell them."

The two parted ways and Voight headed back to Paul's hospital room. Trudy sat by the bed, just looking at the man she used to date, who seemed to be in a deep sleep. Trudy looked up as Voight entered the room, he raised a single finger towards his lips and stepped lightly over towards the bed, and then crouched down to be on eye level with his old friend.

"Paul," Voight said in a low voice, not wanting to startle the older man, "Paul."

A sound caught in Paul's throat and he opened his eyes and looked at his friend, a delayed reaction on his face, waiting for what it was Voight had to say.

"Paul," Voight said, making sure he had the other man's attention, "I'm going to take the kids home with me until you get discharged, alright?"

At first he wasn't sure if the man had even heard him, or understood, then finally, without a word, the senior Lynch slowly nodded his head.

"Take care of yourself, Paul," Hank told him as he leaned forward and closed the gap between them, "I'm going to figure this out, everything's going to be alright."

Paul's eyes were closed again before Voight got the last word out. Hank looked to his desk sergeant who remained silently seated beside the bed, she flexed her eyebrows in an expression that said she didn't know what to make of the whole thing anymore than he did. Hank let out a silent, exasperated huff and leaned closer, pressing his forehead against Paul's, wishing beyond everything that he could find out what was going on and why his own friend couldn't confide in him now, when there had been no secrets between them in all the years they'd known each other.

* * *

Voight opened his front door and with one arm around each teenager, more or less forced Jackie and Roger to step inside, and he came in behind them so they couldn't try escaping.

"Alright, you've both been here before, so you know where everything is," he told them as he gave them a small shove along to the living room, "Tonight I'm going to put the two of you up in Justin's old room, until then," he gave them both a shoved towards the couch and they collapsed against the back of it, "Just make yourselves at home."

The two teenagers sat so close to one another they were practically on top of each other, and they both looked straight ahead with a blank look on their faces. They'd spent the entire car ride home without a single word to one another or to Voight. He'd felt a need to point out he'd already had two teenagers grow up in his house so he could outwait both of them on the silent treatment, but even that hadn't been enough to draw a sound out of either one of them. He could already tell it was going to be a long day, just as well, long days were his life, and he was determined to get to the bottom of things.

Sheesh, if these two were any less responsive, they'd both be catatonic.

"I think I saw this movie before," Voight said as he crossed his arms against his chest, and directing his next comment to Jackie specifically added, "You better not even _think_ about turning into a bear when this is over."

Nothing. Unbelievable. Voight took two steps over towards the couch and knelt down to make eye contact with Jackie and he told her, "Your grandpa's going to be alright, you _know_ that, don't you?"

She looked at him but didn't make any indication one way or another if she was listening. He was sure that she was doing this deliberately, but even he had to wonder. It hadn't been possible with her behavior at the hospital to do a full exam, a full physical, a full anything on her, he was gambling that there wasn't anything serious going on internally that they didn't know about that might be contributing to this strange behavior now. But even if there was, that wouldn't explain why Roger was acting the same way when the doctors _had_ examined him and concluded there was nothing seriously wrong with him, not physically anyway. Whatever was wrong with these two clearly cut far deeper than that.

"Look," he told both of them, standing up and rising to his full almost 5'11 height and towered over them, "One way or another I'm going to find out what happened, and I'm going to take care of this. You two stay here and behave yourselves."

That didn't seem to be any problem, when he came home that night he bet they'd still be right there on the couch in the same position they were now. He turned and left the living room and headed for the front door.

* * *

"Okay, so we know that all three of them know more than they're saying, the question is _why_ aren't they saying?" Erin asked once Intelligence reconnoitered back at the District and started putting everything up on the board.

"Maybe they were threatened if they talked," Ruzek suggested.

"But they know Voight," Erin said, "They know he'd track down whoever did it."

"So maybe it was somebody they knew," Halstead said.

"Who would they know that'd do this?" Erin asked.

"That's the question," he replied.

"Just because they might _know_ who it is doesn't mean they're on _good_ terms with them," Antonio felt a need to point out, "But so far we haven't been able to find anything that points to a motive. Paul doesn't owe money to anybody, he doesn't have any affiliations with anyone we're looking at."

"And those two," Voight stabbed his index and middle fingers at the pictures of Jackie and Roger up on the board, "Don't affiliate with anyone but each other, _period_ , so it can't be anybody _they_ 've come in contact with."

Erin thought of something and guessed, "Unless Jackie's been working her charm on other people, I mean we know she has a problem restraining herself. Maybe she got into a fight and pissed off the wrong person."

"She would've _told_ me if that was the case," Voight told her as he hit the board.

Erin opened her mouth to say something but before she could, Alvin suggested, "What about Paul? Jackie seems to have taken after him more than anyone in that family, is it possible _he_ pissed off the wrong person and this is the payback?"

Voight considered this theory and told his men, "Paul Lynch is a private man, he keeps to himself, he doesn't make trouble for himself or others, not _this_ decade anyway, and I don't see this being some old vendetta."

"Hey Hank," Erin just thought of something, "Are you sure it was a good idea leaving those two alone at the house? If they _do_ know who attacked them, how do we know they're not planning to retaliate?"

"Let them try," Voight responded, "I called in a favor, the house is being watched, if they set one _toe_ out the door I'm going to find out." Turning his attention back to the board he told his unit, "So the two big questions we're looking at here are: _who_ did this, and _why_ are _these_ people keeping quiet about it? Have we heard anything from the crime scene unit?"

Erin answered, "So far the only prints they've found belong to the family."

Voight slowly turned around, he _looked_ like the gears were turning in his head. "No sign of a struggle, no sign of a break-in, no _prints_."

"Sounds professional," Antonio noted.

"It all still goes back to the _why_ ," Ruzek said.

* * *

That night after everyone had quit for the day and gone their separate ways and gone home, Olinsky decided to pay Voight a visit. When the shift had ended, there hadn't been anymore answers than there had been when this whole thing started. He decided though that he'd see if Hank had had any luck getting through to the kids, and if not he was considering the possibility that just _maybe_ he could help since he also had experience with stubborn teenage daughters. Hell, he was starting to think if they could also bring Antonio in on this, maybe they'd be able to crack through, they _all_ knew what it was like to raise daughters, especially ones old enough that they no longer wanted you actively in their lives and often refused to talk to you.

"Hey, Olinsky."

Alvin spun on his heel and looked to see who had called to him. He saw an SUV parked a couple curb spots down from Voight's house and a familiar face poking out of the front passenger window.

"Herrmann," Alvin went over to the car and spoke to the fireman, "What're you doing here?"

"Ah, Hank asked if we could keep an eye on the house for him," he answered.

"We?" Alvin tipped his head down to see who was in the driver's seat.

"Hey, Alvin," Mouch gave a small wave.

"Hey, Mouch," Alvin greeted Trudy's current boyfriend. He guessed he shouldn't be surprised by _that_ one, "You guys been here long?"

"About six hours," Herrmann answered, " _Some_ day off, huh?"

Had to admit, it was a hell of an idea. He'd heard Voight mention before how Jackie could spot a cop a mile away given she spent so much time in the district with them, but he never said she could spot a fireman working on behalf of a cop.

"Seen anything?" he asked.

Herrmann shook his head, "Uh, lights came on a couple hours ago, otherwise we ain't seen anything."

Alvin looked to Voight's house and decided to point out the obvious, "He tell you what's going on?"

"Not a whole lot, just asked we keep an eye on the place for him," Herrmann answered.

"You sure they couldn't have gone out the back way?" Alvin asked.

"Nah, I got Gabby watching the back," Herrmann explained.

Figures, anything to help out Antonio probably, since he was involved with the case.

"Uh, Herrmann," Alvin said, "Do you really think you need to watch the house though when Voight's home?"

Herrmann gave him an odd look and told Olinsky, "Voight's not home."

Olinsky cocked his head to the side, "He's _not_?"

"Huh-uh," Herrmann shook his head, "That's why we're still here, he called and said he was heading out and for us to keep an eye on things until he got back and make sure nobody went in or out without calling him."

Olinsky took a step back from the car and turned around, trying to take this newfound information in.

"Wait here," he told Herrmann, and headed on up to the house.

"Sure thing, Al!" Herrmann called after him.

Olinsky ran up to the porch and banged on the door. After a few seconds the bright porch light came on, Alvin saw the curtain draw back enough for him to get a glimpse of Jackie's face before he heard the locks being undone and the door swung open, leaving only the screen door between them.

"What is it?" Jackie asked him.

"Is Hank here?" he asked her.

She shook her head, "He got a phone call, he said he had to leave," she answered.

"When was this?" Alvin asked her.

She thought about it for a second and told him finally, "About an hour ago."

An hour. Alvin turned around and headed off the porch and down the sidewalk and took his cell phone out and rang Voight's cell, and received no answer.

"Something wrong?" Herrmann asked as Olinsky headed back their way.

Alvin shook his head, "I don't know, Herrmann, I'm going to try and find Hank, you guys stay here and make sure those two don't go anywhere."

Herrmann gave a small shrug as Olinsky walked away and he said, half to himself and half to nobody in particular, "I thought that was the point."

* * *

Alvin called Erin, called Trudy, called Antonio, called everybody who might've had contact with Voight since they left the House, nobody had heard from him, nobody knew where he was, though the hospital had been suggested, go back and see how Paul Lynch was doing. Somehow Alvin wasn't buying it, and he tried to think if he were Hank, where he would go. He then found himself speeding out towards the Lynch home, and sure enough he found Voight's car pulled up in the driveway and was able to see a few lights on through the windows.

Cautiously, Olinsky headed up to the front door and showed himself in, and looked every which way before he took an inch, to make sure he wasn't walking into a trap.

"Hank?" he called out as he made his way from room to room. He checked the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, the basement, nothing, so then he headed upstairs, continuing to call out his partner's name every few steps, trying to get some bearing on where he might be.

"Hank?" he called again as he reached the top of the stairs, "Are you here?" he looked around at the doors that were all closed, "Hank?"

One door had an outline of light shining through the cracks, the bathroom. Alvin tensely stepped over towards it and reached out and grabbed the knob and pulled the door open.

What he found when he opened the door was not what he was expecting to find.

Hank Voight lay in the empty bathtub, his head resting against the fiberglass floor of the tub, his jean clad legs raised up out of the tub, his knees bent at the tub's edge and his feet touching the wall high above the taps.

"Hank," Alvin said uncertainly as he entered the room, "You alright?"

Without giving his friend an actual answer, Voight looking towards the ceiling and said seemingly to nobody in particular, "Jackie said her head was already under the water, that's why she didn't hear anything."

Alvin still wasn't sure what was going on and took another step closer to the tub and asked him, "What?"

Voight looked up at Alvin and sat up in the tub and told him, "Jackie said when the attack happened, she was here in the tub with her head _under_ the water, that's why she didn't hear anything until they came in and grabbed her."

Alvin tried to figure out where Hank was going with this but came up empty and just offered a neutral, "O-kay."

"There was no break-in, the door wasn't kicked in, the lock wasn't forced, whoever these people are, they just _came_ in, nobody heard them."

"And how'd they do that?" Alvin asked.

Voight grabbed the sides of the tub and stood up, swung one leg over the side, then the other, and told Olinsky, "Everybody was already up when the attack happened, Paul only keeps the door locked at night and when he's not here, by that time he'd already unlocked it, got the paper, and went to the kitchen."

"So either these people are just lucky or they were waiting," Alvin said, "Still doesn't add up."

"No it doesn't," Voight said, "And since the kids aren't going to tell us what happened, we're going to have to fill in the missing pieces ourselves."

Alvin was willing, but he still felt a need to ask, " _How_?"

Voight took a step past Olinsky and looked towards the door, and seemed to contemplate the question. Then suddenly, he told Olinsky simply, "Call for backup."


	6. Chapter 6

"Okay, let's try this one time," Alvin said.

Voight was repositioned in the tub with his feet up over the taps and his back flat against the bottom, Alvin came over towards the tub and narrated to the best of their deduction, "So, Jackie's already in the tub doing her hair, doesn't hear the door open, the guy comes in quickly, probably for added effect," he reached over the tub and placed one hand near Voight's forehead, "Slams her head against the tub to stun her," he moved his hand and Voight moved his head back for a visual aid. Alvin grabbed him by the arm and added, "Then grabs her and pulls her out of the tub."

"We _know_ there was a struggle," Voight said as he got up, "Because the water was all over the floor."

"Right," Alvin replied, "And John Doe proceeds to drag her downstairs to the living room."

Continuing with the reenactment of what had happened that morning, the two men headed downstairs with Voight a couple steps behind Alvin, who maintained a hold on his wrist. The two detectives went down the stairs, and headed to the living room, which was already occupied with most of the Intelligence team, and a couple patrolmen for added help. Everybody else was standing around in the living room, but Burgess and Roman were facedown on the floor looking towards the entranceway.

"Sergeant, are you sure about this?" Roman asked.

"Oh sure, you're a dead ringer for Roger in this instance," Voight answered.

"Okay," Alvin said as they entered, "So by this time," he pointed to Erin and Ruzek, who were filling in for the other assailants, "Thing 1 and Thing 2 have already attacked, subdued and tied up Paul and Roger."

"And now Thing 3 and Jackie have entered into the mix," Voight added.

"And from what Jackie said, or at least what we can make of it," Alvin said as he went over to Roman, "The guy who pulled her out of the tub, throws _her_ to the floor beside Roger," at which Voight got flat down on his stomach next to Roman, and Alvin continued, "And then out of the blue starts kicking Roger," and to emphasize, he raised one foot and slowly swung it towards Roman's face.

"At which point, Jackie said she jumped on his back," Voight said as he got up, but since he knew they were both too old to be horsing around to prove such a point, he settled for a second best of wrapping one arm loosely around Alvin's neck and raising one knee against his partner's ribs for a visual aid.

"The question is what happens after that?" Erin asked, "And _what_ are the other two doing during this time?"

"Jackie said she _almost_ got somewhere with this," Voight told them, "But _didn't_ , so either one of the other two pulled her off this guy…"

"Or he _throws_ her off," Alvin suggested, and demonstrated by pushing Voight back with an imitation of sheer bodily force.

"After which," Antonio said, "This same guy drags her _back_ up the stairs, _why_?"

"Maybe," Erin spoke up, "Maybe he wanted to rape her but had issues about 'performing' with an audience."

"Could be," Voight said, "But if that were the case, Jackie was knocked unconscious during the fight, this guy could've raped her then with no problems, as far as we know, he didn't, he left, why?"

"If Erin's right," Jay said, "Maybe he only likes his victims struggling and when she was out cold, the appeal went out of it for this perp."

"And at some undetermined time after this, they all leave, why?" Alvin asked.

"Nothing's taken," Erin said, "Nothing's even _forced_ open, it looks like a very professional job."

"Too professional to have anything to do with these people," Voight noted, "There's nothing _personal_ about it, personal means overkill, this was meticulous."

"Like somebody sent them?" Burgess asked as she and Roman got up off the floor.

"Maybe," Voight considered this, but it still wasn't leaving him any answers.

"Or maybe not," Erin said, and she had the floor, and she told Voight, "I tried to tell you this morning, last night when I was heading home, I came up on a blockade, whole street was cordoned off, last night there was another home invasion and the family _was_ tied up and the women in the house _were_ raped."

"Where?" Voight wanted to know, knowing they hadn't heard anything about it.

"Out of our district," Lindsay answered, "But close enough whoever did it could've come here this morning and attacked Paul's house."

"Does the M.O. match?" Hank asked her.

"It's similar anyway," Erin said, "I didn't get the specifics since they weren't eager to talk to somebody from out of _their_ district but, from the little I saw, that place didn't seem to actually be _broken into_ either."

"So…" Ruzek said, "It's possible she _was_ raped and isn't saying."

"That was always a possibility," Voight replied, and it was obvious through the slightest crack in his regular demeanor that this idea troubled him very much.

"Either way she knows _something_ that she's not telling," Jay said.

"They all are," Erin said, "And we're just coming full circle, they _all_ know more than they're telling, and we can't figure out why."

Ruzek looked to Voight and asked him, "Well, Sergeant, what do we do now?"

Voight seemed to ponder this for a minute, then he told his unit, "We're going to go get those two, and bring them to the station, that's what we're going to do. Then we're going to start checking with the other units and districts and see if these guys are a repeat problem in the area, if they are we could get something to go on to make these two talk."

"You want us to bring them in, Sergeant?" Roman asked.

Voight shook his head, "No, I'm going to do it." Then he thought of something else and told the others, "Then I'm going to Chicago Med and finding out if Paul's well enough to transport, and if he is I'm bringing _him_ in too."

"Why?" Jay asked.

"Because," Voight answered flatly, "Until we know what we're dealing with, I don't want to take any chances on these guys cleaning house to make sure nobody talks."

Halstead was taken aback by this suggestion and he asked, "You really think somebody would go into the hospital and _murder_ Paul?"

"Right now, Halstead, I think these people are capable of _anything_ ," Voight answered, "And until I know otherwise, I'm not taking chances with the only witnesses in this case."

"Herrman and Randy are already sitting on the house," Alvin told Voight, "You want them to bring them in?"

"No," Voight responded without missing a beat, " _I'm_ going to get them, but I'm taking some of you with me."

* * *

When Voight said Jackie and Roger knew where everything was, he hadn't been kidding. He hadn't called to let them know what was going on or even that he was coming home, so when he opened his front door the first thing he saw was Jackie standing five feet from the door with his shotgun in her hands and she looked ready to use it, assuming she _knew_ how.

"Real cute," he said nonchalantly.

Jackie lowered the gun and replied, "How the hell was I supposed to know it was you?"

Voight dangled his key ring and let the keys jangle against one another.

"That doesn't mean anything," she told him, "Somebody could've made copies, or somebody could've knocked you out and stolen yours."

Even if he hadn't watched Jackie grow up in his station, he would've _known_ she spent her life around cops, she left no stone unturned in possibilities.

"Good point," he said dismissively, "Now get your coats, we're going for a ride."

"Where?" she asked.

"Where's Roger?" Voight asked as he walked out of the front hall and towards the dining room.

Jackie followed after him and started to say, "He's in the…"

That was all she got out before she was ambushed from behind by Ruzek and Halstead. She started screaming and struggling against them but to no avail. By now all of Intelligence was in the house and coming in to 'assist'.

Voight found Roger in the living room, pressed flat against the wall, looking scared out of his wits.

"Roger," he said softly, "Come on."

"Wh-where're we going?" the boy asked as he pressed his hands against the wall and slowly moved forward.

"Down to the station house," he told him, "I need to ask you two some questions."

Roger looked terrified, but he didn't need to be told twice, slowly he moved over towards Voight and followed him to the door.

By now, Jackie had already been forcibly removed from the house, Voight clapped a hand on Roger's shoulder and said to Erin, "Erin Lindsay, this is Roger Murdock, will you show him out to the car for me? I'll be right out."

Part of the point of this parade of Intelligence through the house was to hide the fact that an extra person had been brought in. Voight went over to the stairs and looked up at Mouse who stood on the fifth step out of plain view where the teenagers would've seen him, and told him, "Pull the video from those cameras you installed, if they said anything while I wasn't here, I want to know it."

"You got it, Sergeant," Greg gave a small salute, and headed upstairs to check the cameras he'd installed earlier that day before Voight brought the kids home.

* * *

Once they managed to get Jackie and Roger wrangled down to the House, Hank headed to the hospital to check on Paul's condition. He'd tried calling the hospital earlier but hadn't been able to get anybody who was familiar with Paul's condition who could answer one way or another if he was fit to be discharged yet.

Voight entered the front doors of Chicago Med and started to head to Paul's room when he was stopped by the administration nurse.

"Excuse me, were do you think you're going?" she asked him.

He flashed his badge, "Sergeant Hank Voight, CPD, I'm looking for Paul Lynch, has he had any visitors tonight?"

"No," she answered with a small shake of her head.

"Okay, do you know if the doctors have okayed him for travel?" he asked her.

"I don't know, sir," she told him.

"Okay, I'll find out," he said, "Thank you."

Voight wasn't any too eager to trust that nurse's word, just because she hadn't been informed of any 'visitors' didn't mean nobody had come in passing themselves off as doctor or other medical staff, and it didn't mean that she'd actually been watching the people coming in and out all night either. He headed down the corridor to Paul's room, when suddenly he heard a noise he'd had the misfortune of becoming familiar with over the years as a cop, and heard a doctor being called for a code blue, and Voight's heart sank to his stomach as he realized it was coming from the vicinity of Paul's room, and he ran down the hall.

* * *

The next morning the papers ran a brief story about an elderly man who was an eyewitness to a crime being in critical condition following a sudden heart attack, thus severely hindering the police's investigation, few other details were offered, nothing that would ID the man in question.

That was the official story anyway. The unofficial story was that bright and early that morning, a police van pulled in to the 21st District, and a small group of people were loaded out of the back and brought into the station house.

"Hank," Paul said as he removed a set of handcuffs that had been placed on his wrists but not locked, "You get more and more creative all the time."

"This way," Voight told his friend, "If the people who attacked you were planning to come to the hospital and finish the job, they won't bother because they'll think it's you in critical condition."

"And exactly _how_ did you get the press to go along with a faulty story?" Paul asked.

"I didn't tell them it _was_ ," Voight answered.

"Ah, that explains it, that also _sounds_ like something you'd do," the older man said with a small laugh.

Hank clapped a hand on his friend's back and told him, "I'm glad you're here, Paul, I need to talk to you _and_ the kids and I'd like to do it upstairs."

"That's fine with me," Paul said.

"Good, walk this way," Voight pointed towards the stairs and led the way.

Along the way, the elder Lynch couldn't resist stopping at Trudy's desk, "Hi Trudy."

Trudy spun around in her chair and all but jumped to her feet. "Paul! What're you doing here?"

"The hospital said I had to get out, I was too ugly to look at," he answered humorously, then asked her, "Hank didn't tell you he was bringing me in?"

Trudy shook her head, "No, it's good to see you, especially _out_ of the hospital."

"Well it's good to _be_ out," he added, "I'll see you around, Trudy."

Voight stood at the bottom of the stairs and waited for Paul to catch up, then he scanned in and the door swung open.

"Well look at that," Paul said sarcastically, "What _will_ they think up next?"

Hank gave a small smile and told him, "Come on, Paul. I want to get to the bottom of this."


	7. Chapter 7

Upon reaching the top of the stairs, Voight saw Erin coming their way.

"Anything?" he asked.

Lindsay gestured to a desk across the room and told him, "She fell asleep while we were interrogating her. Can you believe that?"

"Yup," Voight answered without missing a beat, and clapping a hand on Paul's shoulder, explained to Erin, "Paul here tells me she once slept through a tornado siren going off."

"She won't tell us anything, Roger went into a panic attack and about passed out," Erin told Hank, "Neither one's giving us anything to go on."

"What's this all about, Hank?" Paul turned to the sergeant.

"It's possible that the three people who attacked you committed another home invasion the night before," Voight explained, "Tied up the men, raped the women."

"And you're bringing them in to question them?" Paul asked.

"We're reaching out to the other districts to see if there's an established pattern on these people and how they work," Voight said, "If so, _then_ we can see about bringing in the other victims. Until then, and until we get some answers back from other cops, we need to go over what happened with you, your granddaughter, and her boyfriend, again and again until we get something new."

"I don't know what else I can tell you, Hank," the older man told him.

"That's my office over there," Voight pointed, "Go have a seat, I'll be in with you in a minute."

First Hank made a beeline over to Mouse's station, where he sat at his desk watching footage on his computer. Voight yanked the headphones off the younger man's head and asked him, "Find anything?"

"Uh," he turned around in his chair, "Most of the time they're talking too low to make anything out, but you were right, they suspected something was up," he hit some keys on his board and replayed one particular part of the surveillance video and told Voight, "This was about the only part where they're intelligible."

Voight looked at the grainy footage of his living room and the two teenagers on the couch, the time stamp was shortly after he'd taken them there and left. After a few seconds, the two looked at each other, and Roger said to Jackie, "What do you think?"

"Hank Voight suddenly trusts the two of us alone in this place?" Jackie said to him, "I'll bet he's got the place bugged, hoping to pick up on something we won't say to his face, so he gets it when it's behind his back."

"After that they quiet down considerably," Mouse told Voight, then hit a few more keys and added, "Until here, it's the only other audible thing I've got."

The scene hadn't changed a whole lot, merely a few small changes of positioning of the two teenagers still seated on the couch, the time stamp half an hour later.

"What if they find out?" Roger asked.

"They won't find out anything," Jackie answered, "They can't find out unless we tell them, as long as we don't say anything, we're in the clear."

Mouse turned in his chair and opened his mouth to say something to Voight, but saw the look on the sergeant's face and moved his chair back five inches. He knew that Voight was a man of great restraint but right now he looked ready to hit something or somebody.

"That girl lied to me for nine years before, now she's lying to me again," he said in a tone of combined disbelief and betrayal.

* * *

Olinsky found Voight leaning against a wall looking tremendously lost in thought about something. Alvin decided to pull up a piece of the wall and stood alongside his partner and friend and asked him, "Need to talk?"

Voight looked at him and asked, sounding like he already knew, "You saw the tape?"

Olinsky just shrugged and said, "Long night, we needed something to do while we waited for you to get back."

Voight shook his head and looked ahead at something that wasn't there, and he told Alvin, "This kid's practically _grown up_ right here in this House, I _thought_ I knew her, I was wrong for 9 years about that, now I'm wrong again."

There was a brief pause before Olinsky turned to Voight and said to him, "Hank, I know it feels the same but take it from me, there _is_ a difference in lying to somebody and just _not_ disclosing something to them."

"Okay," Voight said, not sounding convinced, "So why _now_ has she chosen not to disclose on this?"

"Incase you didn't notice, Hank," Alvin told him, "You've been more of a father figure to that girl than her own dad was. Now, when Erin was living with you, do you think if something had happened to her, she would've told you?"

Voight shot him a dismissive look and replied, "Define 'something'."

"Exactly," Alvin said, "I have a daughter, if anything happened, I'd only find out after she got done telling her mother about it, _if_ she chose to tell me about it. Girls don't want to have to tell their parents they were raped, they _especially_ don't want their fathers to find out."

Voight slowly took in a breath and exhaled it as he said, "And if that _is_ what happened, Paul and Roger already know it, that's why they're not saying anything, to try and protect her."

"So the question is how do we get them to talk?" Alvin asked, "The kids had plenty of time to get their stories straight, and instead they don't say anything."

"Easier not to say the wrong thing then," Hank said.

Their conversation was quickly brought to a halt but a sudden ruckus that had started in the middle of the room. The two men from Intelligence looked and saw Jackie was trying to get away from the other detectives and towards the stairs, but got held up at every turn.

"I am _sick_ to death of this!" she told Erin, "I've been here _all_ night, I don't have any idea _what_ is going on, all I keep getting is jammed up by _stupid_ people!" She moved past Erin and was met instead by Antonio, "You keep asking the same _retarded_ questions over and over," she stepped past him and came upon Ruzek and yelled at him, " _You_ never go home," she moved straight ahead and encountered Roman and screamed at him, "I don't know why _you're_ here," and before she could take two more steps, Jay tried to block her and she bellowed at him, "I don't even _like_ you!", and beyond him was Mouse who had picked the wrong time for a coffee break, "Who the hell are _you_?"

Dumbstruck, he said nothing at first, then finally got out, "I'm…"

"I don't care!" Jackie told him and promptly moved past him.

"I don't know, Hank," Alvin said to him, largely managing not to laugh at the little outburst that had just taken place, "I think 'saying the wrong thing' is interpretive."

The door to Voight's office opened and Paul Lynch stepped out and spotted his granddaughter amidst the parade of law enforcement, "Jackie?"

The 19-year-old girl spun on her heel and saw him and ran over to him, "Grandpa!" She threw her arms around him and asked him, "What're you doing here?"

"It's to my understanding, Jackie," Paul explained, "That we've been brought here for our own protection."

She pulled away from him and stared daggers over at Voight and asked him, "Protection from what?"

"Who," Voight corrected her, and walked over to her, "Jackie, we need to talk."

"No," she told him defiantly as she took a step back, "All I've done all night is talk to cops and I'm sick of it. I want to go home." And with that, she turned and headed for the stairs.

"You can't go home, it's still a crime scene," he told her.

"It doesn't matter," she turned and shook her head, "You're not going to find anything there and you _know_ it! I'm sick of this, Voight."

"Jackie," he said to her, calmly but firmly, "There's a chance that whoever did this attacked another family the night before, and if it is, it sounds like they got interrupted with you, if that's the case they may come back to finish what they started."

"They're not going to do that," Jackie said.

"How do you know?" Hank asked her.

Thinking quickly, she shrugged and remarked, "Why _would_ they come back? They didn't come to take anything in the first place."

"They weren't there to _steal_ anything, but they came for _something_ ," Voight replied, "And I think you know what it is."

"I don't know anything, and I'm sick of these head games, I want to go _home_!" Jackie screamed at the top of her lungs.

"Then why don't you start answering our questions?" Jay wanted to know as he came up towards her and loomed over her, "From the word go all you've done is jam up this investigation, we could arrest you for interfering."

"Halstead," Voight said in a borderline warning tone, but Jay didn't heed it.

Jackie didn't back down, she looked up at Jay and met his eyes coldly and told him flatly, "If you're going to arrest me go ahead, I want a lawyer, otherwise I'm out of here." She turned and started down the stairs.

"Oh no you don't," Jay grabbed her and pulled her back up to the landing.

"Everybody has been walking on eggshells around here trying to figure out what the hell's going on," Jay said as he moved around her and stepped onto the second stair from the top to block her from trying to get downstairs, "All the while for some reason we've all been taking great care not to come off as too intrusive, didn't want seem to pry too much on the offchance you were an actual victim in this. You don't act like _any_ victim I've seen."

"Halstead," Voight's voice was low but threatening by now, but he didn't pay attention.

Two steps above Jay, Jackie was also starting to get a distant look in her eyes and her top lip started to curl and show her teeth like a dog getting ready to bite, but this was also lost on the Intelligence detective, who continued on in his rant.

"You don't want us finding who did this and I think it's because you _know_ them, maybe you even helped them set it up, _why_ are you covering for these people? What is it you're trying to hide?" he demanded to know.

The straw broke the camel's back and Jackie screamed at him, "SHUT UP!" and kicked him.

Kick would be an understatement, Jackie threw one leg forward and shoved her foot against Jay with enough force she literally pushed him off the stair and he let out a scream as his body lost its balance and he fell backwards down the rest of the stairs before finally crumbling to a halt where the stairway turned to reach the floor below.

"Halstead!" Voight was down the stairs in a heartbeat. He stopped as he reached the body that was half crumpled up like a piece of paper and half sprawled out from the fall. The sergeant got down on one knee and checked Jay's vitals. His eyes were two thirds closed and the third that was open was unresponsive, a small gurgling noise emanated from the back of his throat but otherwise he made no sound.

"Call an ambo, now!" Voight called to the officers on the floor above.

For a fleeting second, he kept his gaze upward and saw Jackie standing at the top of the stairs, looking somewhere between shocked at what she'd just done, and the other looked like a reluctant shade of closure at having done it, as if this result had brought her an odd form of peace.

* * *

"Jay? Can you hear me? Jay?"

Halstead tried opening his eyes and first everything was blurry, so he closed them again, and opened them again. Now Erin's face was coming into focus above him.

"Wha…" the room was bright and he had to adjust to it, "Where am I?"

"Chicago Med," Lindsay answered, "Do you remember what happened?"

He didn't, not at first, then it all came back, and he sat up, too quickly, everything started spinning.

"Whoa, take it easy," Erin told him, "Don't move too fast yet."

"What happened?" Jay asked as he closed his eyes and opened them again.

"Minor concussion, tends to happen when you take a header down the stairs," Lindsey explained, "Remember?"

He remembered. "She kicked me."

"I told Hank I'd ride with you," she told him, "Everyone else is still at the station." She sat on the edge of his hospital bed and asked him, "What happened back there? In training didn't anyone ever tell you there's a right and a _wrong_ way to talk to a victim?"

"She's no victim," Jay said.

"You can't prove that," Erin pointed out.

"Yeah well, she sure as hell doesn't act like one," Halstead said as he reached behind him and felt the back of his head.

"What's a victim act like?" Erin asked, knowing the point of her answer was already in the question.

"Okay, fair enough," Jay grumbled as he found a soft spot, "Still, something's wrong with that kid."

"We know," Erin said, "That's why we've been on them all night, trying to get them to tell us _what_ it is."

"Any luck?"

"No."

"Didn't think so," Jay said. Then he thought about something else and sat up again, "Wait a minute!"

"Whoa, take it easy," Erin told him.

But he was onto something, he looked at Erin and told her, "Did you see what happened back there?"

"Yeah," she answered, "I didn't have a front row seat to it like Hank did, but…"

"She kicked me, and _knocked_ me down the stairs," Jay told Erin, "And that's in a place she's not familiar with. All the years she came to hang out at the district, she _never_ went upstairs, right?"

Lindsey shrugged and shook her head, "Not as far as I know, why?"

"If…" Jay sat up straighter now, "If we had been at _her_ house, at Paul's house, and she was at the top of the stairs like that, and I was coming up towards her, and she felt threatened, she would've done the same thing, wouldn't she?"

"Yeah I guess so," Erin said, not really getting what he was getting at.

" _If_ ," Jay said, "If she'd just been coming downstairs when the men were attacked, and this mystery man comes charging up the stairs at her, she would've done the same thing to him, and probably knocked him down the stairs too. But that didn't happen. They came in when she was in the tub and _couldn't_ fight back…" he looked to Erin and asked her, "How did they _know_ to bust in at _that_ exact time?"

"That's what Hank wanted to know too," Erin told him, "He's got Mouse and they're tearing the house apart to see if these guys somehow managed to plant any cameras to spy on them to figure out their routine."

"If they did," Jay said as he swung his legs over the side of the bed to stand up, "God help those poor bastards when Voight gets his hands on them."

"You can't leave yet," Erin said, "The doctors haven't cleared you yet."

"I don't need my brother telling me when I can leave." He took two steps and just about fell to the floor.

Erin rushed to his side and steadied him and asked him, "You were saying?"

Jay grumbled as Erin helped him back to the bed and he told her, "Now I know why Jackie refuses to cooperate with Voight, if she gets her hands on these guys she can probably kill them herself."

Erin looked at him and pointed out, "If they _did_ rape her, she'd be the most in the right to."

"You think that's what it is?" Jay asked, "She's not telling Voight so she can take the tender parts for herself before he finds them?"

Erin shrugged and said, "I don't know, but I know Hank's not going to give up until he finds out."


	8. Chapter 8

Mouse let out a disgruntled huff and shook his head, "Sorry, Voight, if anybody had a camera in this place, I can't find it."

"Why am I not surprised?" Voight returned dryly in a tone of minor but obvious disappointment.

The two men had been at the Lynch home for hours, they'd gone over every square inch, taken each room apart, and all their searches came up empty. The idea that somebody had somehow planted a camera in the house so as to monitor the Lynch family's daily routine from a distance and _know_ the most opportune time to attack was the _only_ school of thought that could explain what had happened, but they didn't even have that.

The tech expert looked at the clearly disgruntled sergeant and told him, "It could just be coincidence, it could've just been dumb luck they broke in here when they did."

"Yeah," Voight said cynically, "And maybe there really is an Easter Bunny."

Greg absently scratched one side of his nose and looked at Hank questioningly and inquired, "You don't think it was an inside job, do you?"

Wrong thing to say. He hadn't worked with the district very long but he had already gotten familiar with the Voight death stare.

"It's the only other thing that makes sense," he quickly followed up, "How else could they have pulled this off? Who would _possibly_ pick 7 A.M. for a home invasion? Why not the middle of the night when they're all sleeping?"

"Because," Voight told the young technician matter-of-factly, "There'd be no way to gauge when they would be, Paul's a notorious night owl, and it stands to reason the kids are too."

"Okay, so let's think about this," Mouse said as he leaned back and sat on the stairs leading to the second floor, "Whoever did this was meticulous, precise, _patient_ , it all goes against the grain of heat-of-the-moment, disorganized, impatient, they didn't come to take anything, they just came to attack two teenagers and a senior citizen, why?"

Voight turned around and slowly paced around the room, looking at everything, and he said, not particularly in answer to Greg's question, "I checked with the gang task force, there are a few open cases of what looks like rape initiations with some of the local gangs, more women they rape, higher up they get into the gangs, and that could tie in _very_ nicely to the previous night's attack."

Mouse scratched behind one ear and asked Voight, "So we're looking for a set of _spree_ rapists?"

Voight nodded, "Could be."

"But if they already _did_ rape…" the death stare again, Mouse dropped that idea and detoured, "You think if something happened to interrupt the rape, they might come back…what makes you think it did?"

Voight couldn't explain that, the only answer he could give was a simple, "Got a feeling."

"If you're right," Mouse said, "Why _would_ they come back? Why not just move onto another target?"

"Because it makes it more personal if they couldn't accomplish what they came here to do," Voight answered.

Greg stood up and asked Voight, "The question is do _any_ of them have the patience and detail to come in, not leave a mark anywhere, and go out again, leaving _everything_ virtually untouched?"

Voight shook his head, "I don't know."

Greg tried to come up with an idea for what their next move was, but he was coming up empty.

"So now what do we do?" he finally asked.

Looking wrought with the agony of defeat, Voight answered, "We go back to the House, and see if anybody's any more eager to talk now than they were before. We're right back to where we first started, all we have to go on is what the only three witnesses to the attack can tell us."

* * *

As soon as Voight returned to the station, he was immediately met with a very worried looking Paul Lynch, who walked backwards to keep up with Hank as he headed through the building.

"Hank, will you _talk_ to her? She's worried sick, she won't listen to either of us," the man told him.

Hank stopped walking, made a small annoyed grunt and shook his head like he was trying to clear his mind, and told his friend, "Alright, I'll talk to her, where is she?"

"Still upstairs, Roger's up there with her to make sure she doesn't do anything drastic."

"That's comforting," Hank dryly noted as they headed for the stairs.

When they reached the top of the stairs they immediately spotted Roger and Jackie pacing around one of the vacant desks, the two were talking amongst themselves but it quickly broke up when they realized they had company. Jackie had a balled up Kleenex clenched in her hand near her mouth, she looked like she'd been sick since Voight left.

"Hank," she said as she shook her head, "I didn't mean to injure him, I just wanted him to _shut up_ and leave me alone, I swear it."

Voight nodded and told her simply, "I know." He walked over towards her and quickly closed the distance between them and before she could get away, he grabbed her and pulled her against him, restraining her in the process and he told her, "I talked to the doctors, Jay's going to be fine, it's alright." He felt her shake her head against him, but he was adamant, "Jay's tough, it's going to take a _lot_ more than you to kill him, Jackie."

"I didn't _want_ this to happen, Hank," she said.

"I know it," he replied.

Voight thought of something else and realized these two had been up there all night and it was now the early afternoon.

"Did you eat anything yet?" he asked.

Jackie pulled back and shook her head, with a matching face that suggested she couldn't even think of food right now.

"I don't need you getting sick on me," he told her, "You know where the break room is, go get something to eat and I'll talk with you later." He let go of Jackie and turned around towards the boy, "Roger."

Roger scampered by with his hands up shoulder-high and said simply, "I'm going," as he followed Jackie down the stairs, moving like he was trying to avoid being shot at.

Now that it was just Hank and Paul alone, the grandfather looked at Voight and asked simply, "How bad _is_ it?"

Voight looked at Paul and told him, "There won't be any repercussions to what happened this morning, Jackie's not going to be in any trouble for what she did to Halstead."

"Well that's a small comfort anyway," Paul said, "But how bad _is_ it?"

"His brother's one of the doctors at the hospital," Hank explained, "He talked to Erin and I got it on authority from both her _and_ the brother that Jay will be discharged soon and he should be fine."

"Well I'm heartily sorry for what Jackie did, Hank, but I know she didn't mean it," Paul told him.

Voight nodded, "I know. Everybody's just on edge, we're stonewalled and I'm having a hard time figuring out where we go from this. I checked your house, hoping we could find an answer there," he shook his head, "We got nothing."

"You thought somebody was spying on us?" Paul asked, "I could've told you they weren't. I don't let anybody in my house, Hank, you know that."

"What about repairmen?" Voight asked, "Plumbers, adjusters, anything?"

Paul shook his head, "Don't need 'em, nothing's broken, nothing's _been_ broken for months."

Voight did a small double take and asked cynically, "Where do you buy your appliances?"

"Hank," the elder man regarded his friend very somberly now and told him, "I know you think that we're deliberately refusing to cooperate with you, I _can't_ speak for the kids, but I don't think I could tell you anymore than I already have."

Hank nodded, "The doctor at the hospital said you hadn't been drugged, just _beaten_ unconscious."

"It's a definite possibility," Paul answered, sounding ashamed to admit it, "Right after they knocked me to the floor and tied me up, one of them bashed my head against the floor and, I don't know _how_ long I was out of it, but I must've been because I have no recollection about several of the things you've asked me about, and I _must've_ been right there when they happened."

"What _do_ you remember?" Voight asked.

"Just what I told you before, I was in the kitchen when they grabbed me, they already had Roger tied up in the living room, they beat the hell out of me, one of them left the room…"

"But you didn't see them bring Jackie in?"

He shook his head, "I don't think so, I've tried to remember and I can't."

"But you know she was there."

Paul nodded, "I saw her jump on somebody, I…felt somebody kicking me at the time, but after that I can't remember anything until you came in and found us."

Hank replayed in his mind that moment when Jackie entered the living room, stepping around the paramedics, dressed in a bed sheet, to get to Paul, he remembered the dazed look of horror on the man's face as he asked her what they'd done to her.

"You know, Hank," Paul told him, "I've done a lot of things in my life that I'm not proud of, I did a lot of things during Vietnam that will haunt me until the day I day, at which time I _will_ answer for them…" he shook his head grimly, "But not being able to protect my own granddaughter, I think that's the _worst_ yet."

"It wasn't your fault," Voight reminded him.

"I wonder," Paul replied uncertainly, "There had to be _something_ , _some_ way to _notice_ what was going on before it was too late. I wonder if I'd been 20 years younger than I am now, would I have been able to stop them? If I was still that young soldier I was 40 years ago, would that have made a difference? I was _trained_ for combat, to _kill_ , Roger wasn't, that boy can't kill a spider, you know that, Hank."

Voight just nodded in agreement.

"I can't expect him to have been able to do anything about what happened," Paul told him, "But I can sure as hell expect better of myself."

Voight shook his head, "You can't beat yourself up over this, Paul. Whoever these guys are, they operate like professionals. Nothing was disturbed, nothing was forced, they just came in, and when it was all over, they just _left_ , _nothing_ was out of place. These are not our garden variety home invaders."

"But what did they want with _us_?" Paul wanted to know.

That was the burning question Voight was just as anxious to find the answer to.

* * *

Antonio was heading past the break room when he heard an unfamiliar noise coming from inside, so he backtracked and looked in and saw Jackie kicking the stand the microwave rested on.

"Hey," he said as he stepped into the room, and she half turned to see who was addressing her, "Why don't you beat up somebody your own size? What did that table ever do to you?"

She said nothing and turned her head to the front again, and without turning around she asked him, "What is it with you people, Antonio?"

"You people?" his eyes doubled in size and he cocked his head to the side in some facsimile of a double take, "For your sake I'm going to go on a limb and guess you mean _cops_?"

"I mean parents," Jackie told him.

"Oh, well that's great, I'm an expert in that field too," he said, "So what is it you want to know?"

She turned around and faced him, "Why is it you people always say you want the truth and then when you get it, you can't handle it?"

He wasn't quite expecting that, and he was a bit dumbstruck at first. "This about Voight?"

"Voight can handle most of my truths," she replied.

"Oh, then you mean you parents," he said.

She didn't answer him right away, she shifted her eyes to look through their corners at something to the side, then finally she said, "All my life they always said to tell them the truth about everything…then I do, and they hate me for it."

A reflex, Antonio automatically started with, "Your parents _don't_ hate you," but she cut him off.

"It's been two months," she told him, "And they haven't had one word to say to me since I told them what happened when I was a kid. They didn't even come to the hospital yesterday, somebody _had_ to have told them what happened, they wouldn't even see their own father…I guess they hate us both. I wonder which one of us they hate _more_?"

"Alright," Antonio said, "You wanted my answer, right?" She nodded slowly, "Okay, here it is. What is it with parents? We can usually foresee every horrible possibility of what could ever happen to our kids, that's why we're chronic worriers because we think of all the stuff they never do, _then_ we find out something else happened we never even considered. That's a very hard thing for a parent to come to terms with. And then as if that weren't bad enough, then we find out not only did something horrible happened, but somebody we knew and trusted was _responsible_ for it, that makes it even harder for us to come to terms with."

Jackie didn't appear to be understanding or sympathetic as she sharply threw back, "My fault for bursting their little bubble about their precious friend and pointing out he has a thing for little girls."

"I didn't say that," Antonio told her.

"But you _were_ around when it happened," Jackie pointed out, "You know it ended on an ugly note for all of us. That's _why_ I moved in with my grandfather. If I hadn't, _this_ wouldn't have happened."

Dawson did a double take at her comment, "You think it's your fault this happened?"

"What I _know_ is if I hadn't been there, Grandpa wouldn't have been in any danger," Jackie said, "If my _parents_ could've acted like _adults_ like they're always expecting _me_ to do, I wouldn't have been there, _we_ wouldn't have been there, everything would've been fine."

"Look," Antonio said to her, "I know this has been hard, but…"

Jackie whipped her head around so quick the rest of her body should've spun to match it, "You _know_? What the _hell_ do you know? _Nothing_ , that's what, you're the parent now, you don't know _anything_ , how many centuries has it been since you even _were_ a teenager? You don't have _any_ idea about _anything_."

Maybe _because_ Antonio had a daughter of his own, he let that slide and maintained a professional disposition while he dealt with her. Staying on subject he firmly made his point, "I _know_ it's been hardest on you but this has been plenty hard on them too, something you'll understand someday when you have kids of your own." She rolled her eyes at his cliché comment, but he continued and told her, "You just have to be patient with them."

She looked at him and told him flat out, "I've _been_ patient with them for 10 years, my patience are all dried up, Antonio."

* * *

Voight walked the two teenagers back up the stairs to Intelligence and gave them a small shove and told them, "Alright, both of you, get over there and sit down."

Paul had gone back downstairs to visit with Trudy and Voight decided that might make it easier trying to get answers out of these two if there weren't any other people around. They'd failed on almost all accounts of speaking to the teenagers separately, so he was going to try questioning them together and see if anything different occurred, but he also realized with Paul's blackout during the attack, maybe it would work better to question them when he wasn't around to hear the details.

"Hank?" Olinsky's voice traveled up the stairs and the sergeant turned and saw Alvin emerge a few seconds later.

"Got anything?" Voight asked.

It was obvious by the look on Alvin's face that he hadn't been counting on Voight having company.

"Can I talk to you?" he asked.

Voight looked to Roger and Jackie and told them, "Talk amongst yourselves for a minute, I have to go check on something," and followed Alvin over to one corner of the room.

"What's up?" Hank asked.

Olinsky shook his head, "So far we haven't been able to get much of a matching M.O. in the other open cases, but I thought of something earlier."

"What's that?"

Alvin leaned over close so nobody else was listening and said to Hank, "We're not the experts on psychology here, maybe we need to bring in some outside help on this."

"A shrink?" Voight asked.

"Not exactly," Alvin said, "I'm thinking maybe we need to bring in someone who better knows the psychology of rape victims, that might be able to get Jackie to open up on what happened. What about that Sergeant…what was her name?...Benson, in New York's Special Victims, maybe she could help?"

"Wouldn't be the first time I invited her out here," Voight commented, "And she and Jackie _have_ already met. On this short notice though, a conference call might be better."

"Hank," they heard Paul's voice echo up and they turned and saw him heading up the stairs.

"Paul, you have the strangest timing," Hank commented.

"Hey Alvin, where'd you get this?" they heard Jackie call from across the room.

"Get what?" the two cops turned to see what it was she was talking about.

Jackie and Roger came up, Jackie was carrying a hockey stick, and she said to Olinsky, "You taking hockey lessons now or something, Alvin?"

The two Intelligence detectives looked at each other. Voight looked back at the two kids and said involuntarily louder than usual, "GET THEM OUT OF HERE, NOW!" He turned one way to Olinsky, then the other to Paul, and told them, "Get them out of here!" he turned back to Alvin and added, "And get Mouse up here, on the double!"

"What's going on?" Jackie asked Alvin as the two men led the two teenagers to the stairs.

"I think we just found one of the missing pieces of this puzzle," Alvin told her as he escorted them down, "And it's another cop."


	9. Chapter 9

"Yesterday I told one of the patrolmen to get that hockey mask _and_ the hockey stick filed away in evidence," Alvin explained to Trudy, "Somehow one of them managed to get upstairs when nobody was looking, Voight thinks they've planted a bug up in Intelligence, a camera, something."

"And this patrolmen was smart enough to do all that and dumb enough to leave the hockey stick behind?" she asked him, finding the story hard to swallow.

"All I know is I told him to get it into evidence, and somebody left it by my desk today," Alvin told her.

"Well the patrolmen don't have access to upstairs, Olinsky, you know that," Trudy told him, "And I didn't let anyone in."

Alvin thought about something and asked Trudy, "What about Roman?"

"What about him?" Trudy asked.

"When Voight came in this morning, Jackie started screaming at everyone in Intelligence, and she went off on Roman asking why he was even there…did you let him upstairs, Trudy?"

The desk sergeant shook her head, "No I didn't let him in, he was already here when I came in this morning. One of _your_ guys must've let him in."

Olinsky scratched the back of his head and sighed, "This case just makes less sense all the time."

"And I have a feeling it's about to get weirder," Trudy nodded her head towards the stairs.

Alvin turned around and saw Voight and Mouse coming down, and Voight looked in his own subtle way, ready to kill someone.

"What'd you find?" Alvin asked.

"Somebody bugged Intelligence alright," Mouse said, and held up something pinched between two fingers Alvin had to squint just to see.

"What is it?" he asked.

"A transmitter," Mouse answered, "Somebody's been listening in on you guys."

"Are you sure that's the only one?" Alvin asked, suddenly wondering just how much the station house had been compromised.

"Well, it's the only one upstairs," Mouse said, and turning to Trudy told her, "We'd better sweep this floor as well just to make sure."

"Who the hell _is_ this guy?" Trudy asked.

"Did you recognize him?" Voight asked Alvin.

Olinsky shook his head, "I just figured it was some new guy on patrol."

"Well, one good thing about this," Voight said, "Whoever did this planted that transmitter so they'd be one step ahead of us the whole investigation, it's fortunate for us now that we _didn't_ have anything to go on."

"Nothing out of _them_ anyway," Olinsky pointed out, "What about the other attacks?"

Voight turned to Mouse and told him, "Go sweep the interrogation rooms first, let me know if they're clean."

"Got it," Mouse headed off to do as he was told.

Voight looked to Trudy and asked her, "Where're the others?"

"In the break room," Trudy said, "Figured it was as safe a place as any."

"Alvin," Voight turned to his partner, "Get Ruzek and follow me."

"Where're we going?" Alvin asked.

* * *

Where they were going was to get Jackie out of the break room and bodily haul her out to the front where Voight proceeded to handcuff her to the old radiator by the wall across from Trudy's desk.

"What the hell are you doing?" she asked him.

"Making sure you don't try making a break for it before we clear this area," Voight told her, "Until we know what we're dealing with, I'm leaving you right where Trudy can keep an eye on you while we check the rest of the house for anymore bugs, and if you _try_ escaping… _she_ ," Voight pointed to his desk sergeant and said, "Will shoot you." He turned to her and asked, "Isn't that right, Trudy?"

In answer, Trudy just patted her gun and said, "Right."

Jackie rolled her eyes and said to Voight, "You _really_ think I'd try running off?"

"I'm surprised you're _still_ here," he told her, he called over to Ruzek, "Bring a chair over here, this could be a while."

"Voight, you can't be serious," Jackie said.

"Oh no? Watch me," Voight took the keys to the cuffs and went over to the front desk and gave them to Trudy, "Don't un-cuff her until I tell you."

"You got it, Sergeant," Trudy said in her typical half-paying-attention tone as she nonchalantly pocketed the keys and went on with her work.

"What about Roger and Grandpa?" Jackie asked.

Voight turned to look at her and explained, "Them I'm not worried about, they're inclined to do what they're told."

"Well how long is this going to take?" she wanted to know.

Ruzek came back with a folding chair and placed it within her reach and then backed away.

"As long as it's going to take," was Voight's answer, "Give or take an hour." He saw the teenage girl roll her eyes again and told her, "First we're going to make sure nobody's got their ears down _here_ , and once we're sure about that, _we_ are going to have a little talk."

Jackie got a pained look on her face and told him, "I'd rather you just shoot me."

* * *

Jackie rattled the chain of the handcuffs between the space of her wrist and the radiator, not because she thought she could actually get it to open, but just because she'd already been sitting there half an hour and was already bored out of her skull. She turned in her chair and looked towards the front desk and got a mischievous smirk on her face.

"Trudy," she called over to the desk sergeant.

"No," Platt answered without even looking her way.

But Jackie tried again, "Tr-u-u-dy."

"No," Trudy answered and this time looked towards her, "Whatever it is, _no_."

"Come on, Trudy," Jackie said, "I have to go to the bathroom."

Trudy rolled her eyes and told her, "For your sake you better be right, because I'll be personally escorting you _into_ the restroom."

"Oh come on, Trudy," Jackie replied, "Do _you_ like peeing when someone's listening in on you?"

Trudy was halfway across the room when Jackie scrunched up her nose, then got out a couple of 'ah's', then let out a loud sneeze, and then blood started gushing out of her nose.

"Crap," Trudy went back to the desk, grabbed a handful of Kleenex and went back towards Jackie and handed them to her, "Here, pinch it off."

"What happened?" Alvin asked as he came upon the scene.

"Nothing," Trudy answered, "Nothing." She helped Jackie bunch up several Kleenex and pinch the bridge of her nose and told her, "Now tilt your head back."

"No," Alvin said as he came over towards them and he told Jackie, "Lean your head _forward_ so you don't swallow the blood."

"Olinsky," Trudy told him, "I know what I'm talking about, you tilt your head back and put ice on the back of your head."

"No, you tilt your head _forward_ and put ice on your nose," Alvin replied.

The two officers' debate was broken up as Voight nonchalantly walked up on the situation and got between them. Without a word he looked down at Jackie, then reached in his pocket, took out a single Kleenex, handed it to her and said only, "Blow."

Jackie lowered the blood soaked Kleenexes and took the new one and did as Voight told her. The sound that ensued sounded like somebody trying to squeeze a whole tube of toothpaste through a sieve, when she lowered the Kleenex, the blood had stopped.

Voight turned to Platt and Olinsky and told them, "I think I'm starting to figure out how somebody was able to run circles around Intelligence here."

"Find anything, Hank?" Trudy asked.

"Not yet," Voight answered as he took the keys from her and undid the handcuff on Jackie's wrist, "Come on, I want to talk to you."

"I have nothing to say," Jackie insisted.

Voight jerked her along, then pushed her in front of him and forced her along. He came up on Mouse and pointed to the interrogation rooms and asked him, "Are those ready for use?"

"Yeah, I didn't find anything," Mouse answered as he quickly stepped aside to let the two through.

Voight turned back and hollered to Alvin, "Get Roger, put him in the next room!"

* * *

"I've already told you everything," Jackie insisted as she defensively folded her arms tight against her chest and settled into one of the chairs at the table, "I have nothing more to say."

"You got plenty that you didn't say and I'm going to find out what it is," Voight told her in his trademark no-nonsense tone that usually reared its head just before he started beating the crap out of perps.

"Go ahead, hit me," Jackie said defiantly as she stared up at him, "You're not going to get a damn thing out of me."

" _Look_ , Jackie," Voight told her, "Something's going on here that's bigger than all of us. Whoever's involved in this case managed to get in here disguised as a cop and compromised _every_ investigation Intelligence is working on."

"And you just _know_ it's related to _our_ case, right?" she asked with a sneer.

Voight grabbed two handfuls of her shirt and forcefully helped her to her feet, but restrained himself as he bluntly told her, "Now look, Jackie, the M.O. of your attack matches other home invasions in the city, only in _those_ cases the women were all raped, there was no _attempt_. If it's the same people, we've got to get on top of this and find them before they do it to someone else, but if it _is_ the same people, we have to be able to connect the dots between those cases and yours, and that means I need you tell me _everything_ about what happened, about what those bastards did to you."

She broke loose from his grip and pinned herself back against one of the walls and yelled at him, "How many times do you have to hear it before you'll get it through your head? I _told_ you what they did to me."

"Not everything," Voight answered, "From the beginning you've deliberately withheld vital information from us, if you _didn't_ , you wouldn't be anywhere _near_ this defensive about the matter."

She folded her arms even tighter and slowly inhaled a large breath, and just shook her head and told him, "Let it go, Hank, you're never going to be able to catch these guys so it doesn't make one damn bit of difference."

"You know me better than that," he replied, "You _know_ I'm going to do whatever it takes to nail the men behind this." He stopped and came down a notch and said, slightly calmer now, "I _know_ this is hard for you."

"You don't have _any_ idea," Jackie deflected as she walked past him and over to another wall.

Voight turned and watched her trek across the room and he asked her flat out, "Why can't you just admit what they did to you? We already _know_ , so why can't you admit they raped you?"

"Oh God, not this again," Jackie grumbled as she hit herself in the head, she turned to Voight and screamed at him, " _Why_ can't you _listen_ to me when I talk? How many times do I have to say it before you'll believe me? They _didn't_ rape me. They didn't _try_ to rape me. They didn't do _anything_ to me."

Voight's patience was quickly leaving him and he raised his voice at her, "Then explain it to me! If they didn't try to rape _you_ , then…" and he stopped, and suddenly everything clicked.

"Roger?" Voight said in disbelief, "They tried to rape _Roger_?"

"Let it go, Hank, just _let it go_ ," Jackie said as she tried moving past him, but he caught her.

"Not until you tell me _everything_ ," he told her, "That went on in that house yesterday."

"I _can't_ ," Jackie insisted as she tried to break loose from him.

Voight was very close to losing it with her, and he told her point blank, "If you don't tell me what happened, I'm going to ask Roger."

"You can't!" Jackie screamed at him.

"I'm the Sergeant in Intelligence," Voight told her, "I can do anything I want."

"You _can't_ do that, Hank, you can't!" Jackie yelled in his face.

Voight remained perfectly calm as he responded, "Because then he'd know _you_ told me? And you promised him you wouldn't, is that it?"

Some of the fight left Jackie, she toned it down but she was still adamant about where she stood on the matter, "This can't leave this room, come on Voight, you know there's no justice for rape victims in this world, _especially_ guys because of the stigma that comes with it. A woman gets raped, she's just a whore, a guy gets raped, he's gay, and you may note there's no such thing as 'whore bashers'."

He said nothing and just stared at her with an unreadable expression on his face, then out of nowhere he said to her, "So tell me."

Jackie sucked in a long, exasperated sigh and walked back over towards the table and sat down and told him, "The one that pulled me out of the tub and dragged me down the stairs, he threw me on the floor next to Roger. The second one had a gun and had it aimed on Roger so he couldn't try anything. But it was the third one, he came over and started kicking Roger, then he kicked Grandpa, the first one kept me pinned so I couldn't get up and stop it. And then the third one, he gets down on all fours and he turns Roger's head to look at me. And he says I'm gonna get a front row seat to what they're going to do to him. Then he grabbed Roger and flipped him over, facedown, they'd already tied him up, he couldn't fight back, he couldn't get away, he couldn't do _anything_." She looked at Voight and told him, "You know how when somebody rapes a woman in front of her husband and he's forced to watch….they know he's always going to remember that, that'll be the first image in his head if they _ever_ recover enough to…apparently this guy had the same idea about raping a guy with his girlfriend forced to watch. I guess that's supposed to be worse, I…I guess I'm supposed to wonder _how_ he _let_ that happen to him…" a small, weak laugh escaped her and she told him, "So you see that proves they didn't _know_ anything about us, because if they did, they'd _know_ that wouldn't even be a question, because it's not in his nature to fight back, he's never been able to. Anyway…" she shifted her eyes to look away from Voight as she continued, "The guy, he gets up on his knees, and he starts to undo his belt. I…" her voice was starting to waver now as she told him, "I don't even remember getting up, it's just the next thing I know I'm on his back and he gets up and he's trying to throw me off and I'm trying to hit him and I'm trying to kick him in the ribs, trying to do _anything_ to _stop_ him. Then…one of the other two hit me and I fell off his back, and the same one that dragged me down the stairs grabs me and drags me back _up_ the stairs…I had no idea what happened to Roger after that."

"But you _know_ he wasn't raped?" Voight asked.

She nodded, "I talked to him when we were at the hospital…it was easy, nobody thinks a guy can be raped, nobody bothered trying to do a rape kit on Roger, once I got to his room we were alone, we could talk freely, he told me that after I was taken out of the room the other two were talking, he couldn't make out much of what they were saying but he was able to hear the one say something about now, he _couldn't_ …" she looked at Voight and repeated in almost disbelief, " _He couldn't_ …apparently some rapists live for the struggle and some lose all arousal from it, have to have their victims incapacitated so they can't fight back."

"Hm," Voight grumbled as he took this all in, "And they left after that."

"Soon after I suppose," Jackie said, "But who's ever going to really know? I told Roger that I'd take care of everything, I told him nobody would ever know, nobody would ever _have_ to know…it's not like you could've gotten DNA anyway, so what difference did it make?"

Voight took a minute to let everything he'd just been told sink it, and finally he told her, "Jackie, it's a commendable thing you've done, but you know I have to disclose this."

She shook her head, "You can't do that, Voight, you can't do that to Roger…"

"Jackie," Voight told her point blank, "I can't let these guys get away just because it's easier for you and Roger, the truth has to come out if we're going to stop them from doing this to somebody else."

Jackie slowly nodded and said, "I know…I was just hoping we could've avoided _this_ part of it altogether." She put her elbows on the table and cupped her hands on the sides of her head as she held it low and shook it, and asked, "How am I going to tell Roger this?"

"You're not," Voight told her as he stood up, "I'm going to."

"He won't talk to you," Jackie told him, "Once he knows _you_ know, he's not going to tell you anything."

"I'll cross that bridge when I come to it," Voight said as he headed for the door, "Then blow it up." He turned to look back at her and added, "And you are staying in here until I get done talking with him, I know that you know how hard this is for him, I don't need you making _my_ job any harder than it's going to be." He closed the door behind him and locked it.

* * *

Roger nervously paced around the interrogation room as he waited for something to happen. Nobody had come in since he'd been brought in and left there, and a thousand different things were racing through his mind.

The door opened and Voight stepped in, and Roger stopped pacing and absentmindedly backed up towards the wall behind him.

Voight closed the door and took a step towards Roger and told him, "I know what happened at the house, Roger."

This sudden statement caught the boy off guard and for a few seconds he was dumbstruck, but he quickly recovered and tried to sound nonchalant, and failed, as he replied, "What're you talking about? I told you everything that happened."

"No," Voight shook his head, "You didn't." He took another step closer to the boy and told him, "But I understand why you didn't."

Roger's eyes widened as the dots started to connect, but he wouldn't budge, he shook his head and insisted, "No, nothing happened." He shrank back against the wall as Voight approached him and he repeated, almost a mantra now, "Nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing…" he let out a panicked screamed as Voight closed the gap between them.

Even with Roger pressed flat against the wall, Voight managed to reach his arms around the 19-year-old's back and essentially pry him off the wall, then maintained a strong hold on Roger so he couldn't get away and he couldn't hurt himself as he proceeded to sink into a nervous breakdown and collapsed against Voight as he broke down sobbing hysterically.

Voight kept one hand firmly planted against Roger's shoulder and consolingly rubbed the boy's back with the other and told him, "It's alright, it's alright, everything's going to be alright, Roger, calm down."

Easier said than done, it didn't take long for Roger to advance to a bout of hyperventilating and he didn't seem able to slow his breathing down enough to stop it.

"Easy, easy," Voight told him, "Breathe, breathe in slowly," he demonstrated and tried to get Roger to do the same, but to no avail, "Let's try this again," he brought one hand up and used his thumb and forefinger to pinch Roger's lips together and told him, "Now inhale." Roger forcibly inhaled through his nose, still rapid but not as much as before. "That's better, now try again," Hank said.

Eventually, Roger's breathing slowed down to relatively normal again and after a while he was able to calm down and finally talk again.

"I don't want you to think that Jackie betrayed your confidence," Voight told him straight up as he helped Roger over to the table to sit down, "I put the pieces together on this one, that girl would've died before she told anyone what happened."

Roger looked at him a bit wild eyed and started to say, "I didn't want to lie to you…"

"I know, I understand," Voight told him, "But now that I know, I have to know _all_ the details of what happened."

That was _also_ easier said than done, it took a while for Roger to recollect the entirety of the attack, several times during his recount the memories and details proved to be excruciating and overwhelming, almost to the point he couldn't go on. But when all was said and done, Voight got an account of events that largely matched Jackie's own filling in of the blanks. By the time Roger finished, he was overtaken by another fit of hysteria and about fell out of his chair. Voight grabbed him and felt his eyes widen as Roger grabbed hold of him and maintained a death grip on the Sergeant.

"I just don't get it," Roger said helplessly, " _Why_ did they do it? Why did they do _any_ of it? Why _us_?"

Voight reassuringly patted Roger's back and told him, "That's what I'm going to find out, kid, you've just got to trust me on this one."

Roger pulled back from Hank and asked him, "Where's Jackie?"

"I got her in another room for her own safekeeping," Voight answered, and tilted his head to meet Roger's downcast gaze and asked him, "You want to see her?"

Roger just shook his head as he looked to the floor.

"You want to see _anybody_ right now?" Hank asked him.

Roger just continued to shake his head, he didn't trust himself to talk now.

Voight slowly nodded and told him, "Alright, I'll leave you in here for a minute, I've got to go check on something. Roger, I know you don't want this getting out, but this information might be able to help us catch them, we _had_ to know."

The boy just slowly nodded in answer.

Voight left the room, closed the door behind him and sucked in a breath. Out of the frying pan, and straight into the blowtorch. Terrific. The question was, what now? Voight had the answer, but he didn't like it.


	10. Chapter 10

"You mean that Roger was the intended target to this attack the whole time?" Paul asked Voight as the two men walked down the corridor.

"I don't know that _anybody_ was an _intended_ target," Voight told him, "There's still the chance this was just a random break-in, as it is, with this new information we have a new M.O. to run through all the divisions to see if anything matches. There's still a chance that somebody else is already looking for the same people we're looking for if they've done it to someone else before."

"So now what?" Paul asked, "What happens with Roger?"

"Since it was only an attempted rape," Hank told him, "We have no use for a rape kit, that's the extent we can spare him, unfortunately he's going to be open to the full investigation, and if we catch them, the full extent of the trial. That's precisely what Jackie was trying to protect him from, she knows the ridicule victims face, and she knows they don't go any easier on guys, if anything they put up even more obstacles than already exist."

"And she knows how damaging that could be to Roger's mental health," Paul put the pieces together and slowly nodded, "That's why she wouldn't cooperate. I couldn't figure it out. I should've asked her, but I was worried what the answer might be given I blacked out during the attack. I've always been one person Jackie could depend on, I don't feel much better knowing it was Roger who I couldn't help."

"I don't like it either, and I don't like having to put Roger through all of this," Hank told his friend, "But I've got to do my job, I've got to catch these guys and bring them in."

Paul clapped a hand on Voight's shoulder and said to him, "You do what you have to, Hank, nobody can ask you to do otherwise."

"I don't know that Roger would agree with that," Voight responded, "And I can't say I blame him."

"Hank," Paul stopped walking and forced Hank to stop in his tracks as well, the sergeant turned to his friend and the grandfather told him, "Let me try talking to the boy, I might be able to get through to him."

Voight looked at his friend curiously and asked him, "You think he'd be willing to talk to you?"

"Well he's lived with us enough that he should know I'm not a judgmental person," Paul answered, and explained, "Hank, I saw a lot of things when I was in the Vietnam War, things that can't begun to be understood or justified by people who weren't there and don't know what it was like…" a haunted look arose in the old man's eyes as he added, "but I also saw a lot of things during the war that _can't_ be explained, _or_ justified, by _anybody_ who claims to be a human being, I witnessed these atrocities and abominations to the human race committed every day, by people on both sides, even the men I was serving alongside, the people I answered to, things that _nobody_ should ever allow to happen…but they did, and they were relentless in it, and even though society was a lot more scrutinizing on us than the soldiers that came before us, the same ones that I saw commit these crimes against humanity, that _did_ come back, were made into heroes, as if all the evil they did over there had never happened." His throat tightened as he spoke, and his eyes glistened as the memories threatened to bubble over in him. But he returned from the ledge of buried emotions and was able to regain control as he told Voight, "I think Roger and I will understand each other very well."

Voight considered this for a moment, and told him as he stepped aside and gestured to the door, "You have the floor, friend, good luck."

* * *

"Hey," Antonio said as he saw Jay and Erin reenter the building, "Look who's back, how're you feeling?"

"I'm fine," Halstead answered.

"Oh yeah?" Antonio asked, "Are you really or did you climb out the window?"

"He's good, even his own brother cleared him," Erin told him.

"Well that's good to know," Antonio said, "The way things are going here, we're going to need all the manpower we've got."

"What's going on here?" Erin asked.

"Well, Jackie finally started talking, it's worse than we thought," Antonio told them.

"What?" Jay asked as he rubbed the back of his neck, "Exactly what could be worse?"

"Turns out that Jackie wasn't the one who was sexually assaulted," Antonio explained, "It was Roger."

"What?" Erin asked.

"Yeah," Dawson said, "That's why she wouldn't say anything, because she didn't want anybody to know. So now it seems we're looking for a gang of intruders that rapes the men of the family, not the women, so now I've got to run this new M.O. past the gang task force and see if _it_ matches anybody they're looking for. Jackie jumped the guy that tried to rape him, apparently that put an end to it for the time. If Voight's right and they're looking to come back and finish what they started, we gotta find these bastards and quick."

Antonio left and Erin turned to Jay, lightly scratching behind one ear and she asked him, "What was that you were saying earlier about acting like a victim?"

Halstead covered his face with his hand and grumbled, then he looked at Erin and told her, "Take me back to the hospital, I feel like I just got hit by a truck."

"Come on," Erin said as she pushed him towards the stairs.

"Erin," Olinsky came over to them before they scanned in.

"Hey Al, where's Hank?" she asked.

Olinsky pointed towards the back, "He's got the kids in the interrogation rooms."

Lindsey was off and running. She saw Voight watching one of the rooms through the two-way mirror, she came up to him and saw he was watching Paul talking with Roger. She couldn't hear what they were saying but she watched their movements, whatever Paul was talking to Roger about, Roger was making it clear he didn't agree with it.

"What're they talking about?" she asked Hank.

She turned to him and saw him slightly shake his head as he told her, "I decided to give them _that_ much privacy."

Through the glass they could see Roger get wide eyed and shake his head and though they couldn't hear it, they could see him telling Paul "No" over and over. Whatever the conversation was about, Paul remained calm and collective and continued to talk to him.

"So Paul wasn't stonewalling us," Erin said, "He really didn't know what happened."

"He felt guilty that he blacked out during the attack and didn't know the extent of what had been done to the kids," Voight told her, "Jackie stonewalled us to protect Roger."

Erin watched the scene unfold in the room and she shook her head, "We should've figured it out. We should've known something was up with the way Roger acted."

"That's no act, he's been that way most of his life," Voight told her, "If you ever knew his father, you'd understand why."

"Still, how did we miss this?" Erin asked.

Voight looked straight ahead and answered her, "Because we didn't want to see it, same way society doesn't want to see it, society can admit women are victims, it's even getting to a point society can admit they don't ask for it, but guys…they're still held to a higher standard of scrutiny in these cases, and Jackie knew it. The public doesn't care about the truth, they only hear enough to fit their agenda and they go off on that and only further victimize the victims."

"So what're we going to do?" she asked him.

"Got no choice," Voight told her, "This is going to be public knowledge, everybody's going to find out. I have to call Cassie and let her know, this is going to be just as hard on her as it is on him, she already thinks she failed Roger."

"She may be right," Erin said, and she caught Voight's turn and glare at her, "She stayed with that piece of crap husband, she could've let you handle it at any time. You said it yourself it's because of his dad that Roger turned out this way."

"And that has nothing to do with what happened to him yesterday, you _know_ better than that," he told her, "Whoever they are, they're precise, they know what they're doing, they managed to subdue a whole family, it wouldn't have mattered if Roger was more assertive, they got him first and they _still_ would've gotten him."

"I know," Erin replied with a nod, "It's just frustrating."

"Yeah? Imagine it from _that_ side," Voight nodded towards the interrogation room.

Through the mirror they could see Roger's demeanor had deteriorated quickly and he was crying again. Paul managed to reach the boy without him lashing out, and pulled Roger to him and held him tight so he couldn't get away or hurt himself and though they couldn't read his lips they could tell he was speaking softly trying to get the boy to calm down.

"The voice of experience," Voight noted.

"What do you think he's saying?" Erin asked him.

Voight watched the scene inside and answered simply, "He _gets_ it."

Truly, he saw the expression on Paul's face, he knew that look; trying to keep everything together and trying to keep yourself from falling apart at the same time, trying to keep yourself pulled together to help someone else get through the same thing. The pain didn't just transfer, it expanded, there was enough to live and breathe in both people, and it was able to do so because it was a mutual pain both people shared. Voight didn't know what Paul had been through back in the war, if it had hit him directly, or indirectly through the suffering of another he knew, whichever it was, he'd lived through it all and seen the bastards walk away unscathed and never held accountable, precisely what Voight was determined _not_ to let happen now. To do the right thing would just open the wound further, but maybe that was exactly what had to happen for any healing to truly occur.

* * *

Voight needed to talk to somebody and he needed privacy for it. He went to his office, locked the door, took out his cell phone, scrolled through the contact list and hit the number of the only person he felt confident reaching out to right now.

It rang, once…twice…three times…

"Benson."

"Hey Olivia," he said, trying to sound like his usual self, least of all usual whenever he talked to her.

"Hank?"

"How's the prettiest detective in all Manhattan?" he asked, a small smile forming on his face despite the weight of his newest problem sitting heavily on his shoulders.

"Uh, I've been good," Olivia answered, "How are you?"

"I need advice," he decided to cut to the chase, "Believe me, I wish I were calling for a different reason."

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"I didn't get you at a bad time, did I?" Voight looked to his watch.

"No, actually, you got me just as I was leaving," Olivia said.

Voight consulted his watch again, "Early, isn't it?"

"It's a long story," she replied, "So what's going on?"

"Well, you remember that girl Jackie Lynch?" Voight asked her as he went over to his chair and sat down.

"Yeah, what'd she do now?" Olivia asked.

"It's what's been done to her and hers," Voight explained, "Yesterday morning somebody broke into Grandpa's home and tied up he and Roger and beat the crap out of all of them. We'd suspected from the start that Jackie might've been raped, or at least an attempted rape, today I find out _she_ wasn't the victim, Roger was."

"The boyfriend?"

"Yeah, that's the one," Hank said, "From what we've been able to piece together, three guys in ski masks somehow managed to sneak into the house without disturbing anything, assaulted Roger, tied him up, assaulted Paul, tied him up, went upstairs, found Jackie in the tub, dragged her downstairs, forced her to watch as Roger was sexually assaulted."

"My God," Olivia's voice turned into a disturbed exhale.

"Jackie managed to stop the attack before the guy got anywhere, but Roger's still shaken up and he's still scared to death about this going public when and if we manage to catch the men that did it. I figure this is more your area of expertise, you got any suggestions for how we handle this?"

"Let me think," Olivia replied, "Do you have a psychiatrist there that could counsel him?"

"None on hand," Voight answered, "I can probably find one, getting him to actually talk about it's going to be another challenge though. I wish you were here, Olivia, you might be able to get through to him, you got Jackie to crack open and she doesn't tell anybody anything, maybe lightning would strike twice." Another idea occurred to him and he added, "By chance you don't happen to have any cases that match this one, do you?" Right now that was the _last_ thing he needed, to make another trip to New York for a cross-reference case where the same guy pulled similar jobs in both districts.

"No." Good. "Not that I know of anyway."

"Not that it wouldn't be nice to be able to come out and work with you again," Voight told her, "But I've got my hands full with this one right now."

"Believe me, I know the feeling," Olivia told him, "We've got our hands tied with half a dozen different cases at the same time. Not to knock our current crew but right now I'm _really_ missing the old one, things just haven't been the same since Elliot and Munch left."

"I'll bet," Voight said with a small smirk, "That ex-partner of yours still remembering to come around from time to time?"

"Oh yeah," Olivia answered, "Elliot's even offering to unofficially help me sort through the mountain of paperwork we've got on our perps, I'm sure he'd love to unofficially kick all their asses as well."

"I think he just misses working with _you_ ," Voight told her.

Olivia laughed and replied, "I don't know about that."

There was a pause, then Olivia said to him, "Hank, do you think Roger would be willing to talk in a video conference, to another survivor of sexual assault?"

It was an unusual idea, especially for being so random, Hank thought about it and just asked her, "Who'd be willing to do that?"

"Me," Olivia answered.

"You?" Voight said in disbelief.

"Do you remember when you visited me in the hospital after you shot William Lewis?" Olivia asked, "Remember how I went on for a couple hours confessing everything to you that had been going on in my life the last couple years? Remember somewhere in the midst of it all I mentioned a place called Sealview prison? I was working undercover investigating the guards for raping the women prisoners…I found him, he killed the mother of the girl he raped, and he tried to rape me, and he would've except my partner, Fin Tutuola, found us and came in at the right time."

"You'd be willing to talk to him about that?" Voight was stunned.

"After it happened," Olivia continued, "I tried to convince myself that I was fine, that everything was normal, because I _hadn't_ been raped, I didn't really understand why I joined a therapy group for rape survivors, because I kept telling myself _I_ wasn't actually raped…it didn't stop the PTSD from setting in, and it made my life hell. It took a long time to get any easier and until it did, the only thing I could take comfort in was knowing that there were people out there I could reach out to who _understood_ what I was going through, I could talk to them about it. I think I know what's going through Roger's mind right now _very_ well."

"You're a brave woman, Olivia," Voight told her.

"I don't know about that," she responded, "I just know that one of the worst things that happens to sexual assault victims aside from the attack itself, is the treatment of them, the ostracizing, the isolation, the muting, the many ways that society, the justice system and everybody else tries to shut them up so they can't tell their stories, and makes them feel like they have nowhere to turn, no one who understands what they've been through, like they're a burden for trying to talk to someone about what happened, like their attack is not worth anyone's time to _have_ to listen to it. I think, if Roger knew someone else knows what he's going through, it might make it easier for him to talk about it, it might make it easier for him to deal with it."

Voight smiled. He liked the way this lady thought. He asked her, "When can you start?"

* * *

Trudy came back from the restroom and saw Jackie sitting on the stairs next to the door where the Intelligence officers scanned in to get upstairs. At first she was tempted to ask 'who let you out of your cage?', instead she went over to the stairs and got the young woman's attention and told her, "You might want to move before somebody opens that door on your spine."

But Jackie didn't seem to be paying much attention. She pressed her hands against the sides of her face and told the desk sergeant, "Everything is a _mess_."

"Yes it is," Trudy told her, "That's life, that's what _we're_ here for, to clean it up."

"I failed him, Trudy," Jackie told her as she sat up straighter.

"Who, Roger?" Trudy asked, "Jackie, you're the only thing that _stopped_ the attack, you can't beat yourself up over this."

Jackie let out a short, humorless laugh and told her, "Shows what you know, just watch me."

Voight came over to the stairs and addressed the desk sergeant, "Trudy, you mind letting me in here?"

"Sorry, Hank," Trudy moved out of the way and went back to her desk.

Voight sat down on the stairs beside Jackie and told her, "She's right, Jackie, this wasn't your fault."

"Then whose was it?" Jackie asked.

" _Them_ ," Voight answered, "The ones who actually _did_ it."

"Yeah well they ain't here to answer for it, are they?" she replied, "And they _won't_ be."

"Give it time," Voight told her, "We'll catch them."

Jackie grumbled and hit herself in the head and murmured, "This is _so_ messed up." She looked at Hank and told him, "I wish I could trade places with him."

"No you don't," Hank told her.

"Yes I do," she responded, "If it _were_ me, I'd have _no_ problem admitting what happened, I'd have _no_ problem seeing it through. I know the ball's _not_ in the victim's court, it almost _never_ is, I've _always_ known that, and _not_ just because I grew up here."

"Oh?" Voight turned to her, "How then?"

She looked at him and slowly started to explain, "Did I ever tell you about my dad's sister, Cathy?"

"Nope," Voight answered.

"Well one time when I was a kid I was staying at her house for the night, and I went nosing through her VHS tapes to see what she had to watch and I found this one tape that'd been recorded off of TV a _long_ time ago. The guy that was Rambo's colonel was a cop who one night off duty chases after two crooks, they steal his gun, beat him up and rape him, and then suddenly _he's_ on the receiving end of all the scrutiny and ridicule and finger pointing all the other victims had been put through. He was a man _and_ a cop and everybody _still_ said he was asking for it, his own partner said he didn't deserve what the defense was going to do to him. Kind of funny, isn't it?"

"What is?" Voight asked.

"That movie must be almost 30 years old," Jackie said, "And they knew back then that nobody deserves it, nobody asks for it, but that logic is somehow lost in every courtroom in this damn country, as well as still most of the court of public opinion. Somehow common sense has a way of getting trampled to death because it doesn't fit the masses' agenda that out of all the crimes in the world to inflict upon innocent victims, rape is the _one_ that isn't really a crime at all, because the victim _wanted_ it, they _asked_ for it, they did something to _deserve_ it, nobody uses that logic when somebody gets robbed and says 'well then they should've looked poor so nobody would have _reason_ to rob them' or when somebody's murdered nobody says 'how do you _know_ they didn't _want_ somebody to kill them? But rape, oh boy if you're not a virgin and you're not a 10 year old, then it's your fault and it's something _you_ did to bring it on yourself."

Voight listened to everything she said and slowly nodded and just told her, "It's an imperfect system, Jackie, but it's not going to get any better just because we quit using it."

She shook her head and told him, "I think the wrong people are using it."

Hank slipped an arm around her back and pulled her against him and told her, "We'll figure this out, Jackie, you've just got to be patient. Tell me something though," she looked up at him and he said to her, "With everything that you've just told me, _why_ then didn't you ever say anything about what happened to you as a kid?"

"Because as a kid you make a distinction between actually being raped and just somebody _trying_ to," she answered, "In the latter, there's no evidence, so who would've believed me anyway? Nobody _did_ believe me anyway."

"I believed you."

"Not my parents, they didn't believe me."

"They believe it, that's _why_ it was so hard on them," he told her.

"It doesn't matter, they don't care anyway," she said, "If that bastard would've though, I wouldn't have cared if they'd believed me or not, I would've told them, I would've told you…I would've told everybody, I already knew there was little justice for rape victims, I wouldn't have had anything to lose."

Voight pointed out, "But you went through all this to shield Roger."

She just shrugged and answered, "He deserves better."

Voight pulled her closer to him and she tilted her head and rested it on his knees. He patted her head and told her, "It's going to be alright."

Jackie's eyes widened and she picked her head up and said to him, "I just thought of something, Hank. Whoever managed to get in here and plant that bug upstairs, what if it _wasn't_ an imposter who did it? What if it was a _real_ cop? What're you going to do then? How're you going to stop them?"


	11. Chapter 11

"It's a fair question," Erin said to Voight after he relayed Jackie's concern to the others, "If there _is_ a real cop involved in this, we're either going to be stonewalled when we reach out to the other districts to compare cases or we're going to get the runaround to a dead end or a scapegoat."

"I know," Voight told her, "That's why I've got Mouse on this."

"Mouse?" Halstead repeated, "What's he doing?"

"Pulling every surveillance video from every building on this block from last night and this morning to see _who_ came into this building and left before Trudy got in," Voight answered.

"If he does, what will that prove?" Ruzek asked, "We know somebody got in and left, do you think we'll be able to recognize whoever it is?"

"There's a chance Alvin can since he spoke to one of the patrolmen from yesterday," Voight answered, "We're going to cross that bridge when we come to it, until then we're checking with all the other units and task forces to see if anybody's working a case that's similar to this one, and if anybody gets the notion they're being sent on a wild goose chase, report to me. Right now it seems to me we have another issue to deal with."

"What's that?" Erin asked.

"These two kids have been awake for over 24 hours and are _both_ running on empty and about to crash and burn. They can't go home, and I don't want them out of my sight, we got to put them somewhere around here that they can sleep _and_ I'll know they're safe. The whole building's been swept, we haven't found anymore bugs."

"Okay, but where're we going to put them?" Antonio asked.

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Voight said.

"We could put Jackie back in one of the interrogation rooms," Erin suggested, "She managed to conk out with us screaming at her."

"No good," Hank shook his head, "I want the both of them together so we only have to stop in one place to check on them."

"It won't work," Jackie said, and the others turned to see her standing behind them.

Voight looked at her and asked, " _What_ won't work?"

"There's no place you _can_ put Roger and me, it won't work," she told him.

By now it was obvious exhaustion was taking its toll on Jackie, the whites of her eyes were bloodshot like she'd been drinking all night and in general she was starting to look like a zombie.

"You said it yourself, Hank," she said, "We can't go home," she paused and gestured with her arms and said, "This place has already been compromised…" she shrugged and told him, "Story of our lives, there's just no safe place for us in this world, never was, we weren't even safe at home with our parents."

Voight thought about it for a minute, and a light bulb went off.

"I know a place," he told her.

* * *

"Voight, this is ridiculous," Jackie said, "This is never going to work."

"This will work perfectly," Voight said as he crouched down between the two teenagers sitting on the floor on two sleeping bags he'd had Antonio and Olinsky bring in along with pillows, "Now, did you two swallow those sleeping pills I gave you?"

"Yes," the two teenagers answered, unenthusiastically.

"Good," he told them, "Now, you two lie down," he grabbed Jackie's ankles and somewhat forcefully tucked her into the sleeping bag, Roger followed suit of her own volition since he didn't want Voight doing the same to him, "Close your eyes," he zipped up the bag to confine her, "And _go to sleep_. Okay?"

"Okay," Jackie grumbled.

"Okay," Roger agreed.

"Okay," Voight told them.

"Hey," Jackie tried to reach out to him and said tiredly, "Thanks, Hank."

He looked down at her and smiled, and he told her, "It's going to be alright, Jackie, you two are safer here than anywhere else right now."

Voight turned and looked at Roger, who looked like he was halfway gone already. He stood up, stepped around the front desk, and said to his desk sergeant, "All yours, Trudy, thanks."

"No problem, Hank," Trudy replied as she patted the gun on her hip and stepped around the desk, and over her two new obstacles laid out three feet behind her, and went back to her work.

Voight walked down a corridor and came upon Paul who was draining a cup of coffee.

"How're you holding up?" Hank asked him.

"Probably better than those two given I actually got a few hours' sleep before you busted me out of the hospital," Paul answered.

That wasn't what Voight had been hinting at but he decided not to press it.

"So how did things go with Roger?" he asked.

"Well," Paul took another swallow of the coffee and told him, "This is all still very overwhelming on him, and right now he wishes he was anywhere and anyone else…but I think if you _do_ manage to catch these sons of bitches, that he _will_ testify."

Voight nodded, "That's good. Follow me."

Paul went with him down another corridor and told him, "You know, Hank, I'm really disappointed in my daughter."

"So am I," Voight replied, and added almost as an afterthought, "What for?"

"I really expected better out of her, you know? You raise your kids, you try and bring them up right, and then what happens?"

"Got me," he said, "I'm still trying to figure that one out myself."

"It doesn't bother me so much that she couldn't be bothered to come see _me_ in the hospital, but your own daughter's attacked and you can't even get around your own hang-ups enough to come to the hospital and see if your own child's okay? Where the hell did I go wrong with her?"

"That's before I knew you, Paul," Voight pointed out, "I can't help you there, but I'm sure it's nothing you did. I've seen the way Jackie turned out, I know she didn't get that from her parents."

"It would be very tempting to blame my son-in-law as being a bad influence on her," Paul told him, "But to tell you the truth I think I held out more hope for _him_ than her. I'm disappointed in both of them, problem is I can only disown _one_."

Voight turned towards the stairs, then back to Paul and said to him, "I'm meeting with my men upstairs to discuss the case, you want to come?"

The older man shrugged and said, "I don't know what help I can be, but alright."

"Walk me through it again," Voight said as he reached out to scan in, "During the attack did you hear any of these guys talk? Did you pick up a scent off any of them? Did…"

Paul looked at Voight and noticed the sergeant was looking at the door.

"What is it, Hank?" he asked.

Voight looked the door up and down and scanned in, and it flung open. Voight ran his hand down the door and the doorjamb, and he rubbed his thumb against his index and middle fingers.

"What is it?" Paul asked.

Voight told him, " _That's_ how they got upstairs."

"How?" Paul asked.

"Somebody put something between the door so it couldn't close fully," Voight told him, "Then when nobody was looking, they pulled the door open, went up, planted the bug, left the hockey stick behind, came down, took whatever it was _off_ the door, and left."

"What do you think it was?" Paul asked.

"Something adhesive, something that would block the door just enough that it would _look_ closed if somebody saw it, but the lock didn't set," Voight told him, "They're smart bastards, whoever they are."

"But it still doesn't answer _why_ they left the hockey stick behind," Paul said.

Voight had a guess, "To let us _know_ they're onto us. Whoever they are, they feel certain that we're _never_ going to find out who they are."

"And what time yesterday was that patrolman in here?" Paul asked.

Voight looked at him and answered, "Before we came to see you."

"So _somebody_ knew that we know each other," Paul said, "It could be connected."

"It might," Voight wasn't ready to admit that just yet, "Or it could be whoever it is did a sweep of all the local precincts to make sure nobody _was_ onto them."

"Either way," Paul said, "I wish that friend of yours would hurry up and find something on the videos so we know who we're looking for."

"So do I," Voight told him.

* * *

"So as it turns out," Antonio told the rest of Intelligence, "There _are_ a few open investigations on home invasions where the whole family was assaulted, and tied up, but only the men were raped. Unfortunately in most of these, the victims aren't forthcoming and aren't willing to cooperate, not that we can really blame them, we're well versed in how much the system is _not_ sympathetic to victims, especially male victims."

"Precisely why Jackie didn't want us finding out about Roger," Voight said.

"Most of them have tried to deny what happened to them, unfortunately the medical evidence from the hospital proves otherwise," Antonio continued, and added, "But we haven't found any instances where the attack was interrupted, so we don't know for sure that any of them are linked to _this_ case."

"Except that three of them," Atwater pointed to three pictures on the board, "Share the link that there was no forced entry and nothing was disturbed, so whoever pulled these jobs looks good for this one too."

" _Were_ any of the victims able to describe their attackers?" Voight asked.

"Black clothes, ski masks, sound familiar?" Antonio asked.

"Three of them?" Voight asked.

"Some said three, some said two, between the head injuries and the overall shock of the attacks, I'm not sure any of them really know," Dawson explained.

"I've got it!" Mouse entered the room and pinned a new picture onto the board, "This is our mystery guy. He entered the building at 4:15 this morning, and left at 4:47."

"We'd gone downstairs after 4:30," Ruzek said, "We came back up before 5."

"He knew what he was doing, he waited us out and watched for an opportunity to get upstairs, and downstairs, and out, without anybody noticing," Atwater said.

Voight pointed to the picture and turned to Olinsky, "You recognize him?"

Alvin looked at the picture. The man was still dressed as a patrolman, he looked to be in his early 30s and had short dark hair and a bad complexion.

Olinsky nodded, "That looks like the guy."

"Unfortunately I wasn't able to enlarge the picture enough to get any identifying information about him," Mouse said.

"Sergeant," Burgess's voice bounced off the walls as she came up the stairs, "Sergeant, sorry to interrupt, Sergeant Platt sent me."

"What's going on, Burgess?" Voight asked.

Kim opened her mouth to answer, then froze for a second, then she told him, "There's been another break-in, whole family was attacked."

"Let's go," Voight turned to the others, "Now."

* * *

Arriving on the scene they could tell it wasn't good, three police cars and two ambulances and nobody was being brought out yet. Everybody got out of their cars, identified themselves and went in to speak with the other cops.

"What happened here?" Voight asked the officer who seemed to be in charge of the investigation.

"From what we can put together," he answered, "'bout an hour ago, somebody broke in here, took the family hostage, tied up the men, assaulted the women, the two grown sons, 27 and 25, were raped, one of them," he pointed to a young man in the living room being loaded up on a gurney, covered in his own blood, as was the floor beneath him, "Critical condition, multiple skull fractures, the family says from a gun one of them was carrying."

"Three of them dressed in black and wearing ski masks?" Voight asked.

The cop did a double take at him, "How'd you know?"

"We got a similar case at the 21st District, I think we got 3 perps in common," he answered.

It was now that Voight first saw a young woman on the floor with her upper body leaning against the wall, she was being tended to by a paramedic.

"What happened to her?" he asked.

"Victims' sister, 22 years old," the cop told him, "She tried to stop the attack, fought back against one of them, took a header against the wall, lost consciousness."

Voight looked around the house and noted, "For breaking in, I'm not seeing any damage. How did they get in?"

"Through the back door," another cop answered, "It was unlocked, there's an alley out back, not a lot of room for witnesses to see anything."

"Figures," Voight said, "Where's the rest of the family?"

"Mother's in shock, other brother's in the bathroom puking his guts up, got a medic and an officer in there with him to make sure none of the evidence's lost, dad's talking with another officer, so far he's the most lucid, but it's still not giving us much to go on."

"Was he attacked too?" Voight asked.

"He got the hell beaten out of him," the first cop answered, "He insists he wasn't raped, given the state his two boys are in, he's probably telling the truth."

"What were they all doing home in the middle of the day?" Voight inquired.

"Whole family's employed as custodians, they work a night shift together," another cop answered.

Voight looked at his men and told them, "So, either they were in bed, or they were just in the process of getting up and around when this happened. Sound familiar?"

They saw the first brother being wheeled out the front door to the awaiting ambulance, and saw his blood on the floor, and they knew the odds weren't good for the victim's survival. Voight felt his stomach start to turn and felt a surge of stomach acid rising into his throat as it hit him that this could very well have been the scene they walked in on the other morning if luck hadn't been on the Lynches' side.

"We have _got_ to find out who the hell these guys are and quick," Antonio commented, "Before they find someone else."

* * *

The first thing Voight did when they returned to the station was head to Trudy's desk, and he started to ask her, "Trudy, has any…"

The desk sergeant instead cut him off by raising a finger towards her lips and quietly shushing him. Voight braced his hands on the desk's top and leaned over to see Roger and Jackie were still asleep on the floor behind her.

"Have they been giving you any trouble?" Voight asked.

"No, they've been fine," she answered, and using her foot to point towards them, gestured to one, then the other, "This one won't quit snoring and this one keeps rolling around and flopping like a fish out of water."

"That's good," Voight answered in a slightly lower tone, "As soon as they wake up, bring them to me, I'm going to have some new questions for them."

Trudy looked at Voight and she could tell something was off, she asked him, "Are you alright, Hank?"

"I'll be better once I get these bastards in one of the cages downstairs," he answered.

"What happened?" Trudy asked him.

"It looks like they're escalating, one of the next victims probably isn't going to live through the night, I'm expecting a call as soon as they know," Voight explained.

"Oh my God," Trudy exhaled in disbelief, she took a second to compose herself and told him, "Whatever you need me to do, Hank, you just let me know."

"Thanks, Trudy, oh, by the way," Voight reached into his jacket and took out the picture Mouse had made of their mystery patrolman, showed it to her and asked her, "Does this guy look familiar to you?"

Trudy looked at the picture and shook her head, "Sorry, Hank, he looks like he could be any one of a dozen patrolmen I see in here day in and day out."

"I know, that's the problem," Voight replied as he pocketed the photo, "It's only minor consolation that he didn't match any of the faces _on_ the scene. Is Mouse still here?"

"I think so," she answered.

"Good," Voight headed for the stairs, "I've got another idea."

* * *

"Run this picture through the facial recognition program and check it against every guy we've got in the system," Voight told Mouse as he gave him back the picture, "Run it against every picture of every guy we've got, _period_."

"You think it's an ex-con?" Mouse asked.

"Right now we can't afford to leave any stone unturned, it's just as likely it's a cop as it is a perp, but I'm going to find out."

Mouse looked up at Voight and told him, "You know the recognition program's not definite."

"I know it," Voight told him, "Run it anyway."

Mouse shrugged and replied, "You got it."

Voight headed to his office and found Paul was there waiting for him.

"What'd you find?" he asked.

Voight shook his head, "You don't want to know."

"They went after someone else, didn't they?" Paul asked.

Voight didn't answer at first, then he nodded and told him, "Yes."

"And it's worse than what happened to us, isn't it?"

"Oh yeah," Voight slowly nodded.

Paul took this in and asked him, "Is it _because_ of what happened with us the other day?"

"I don't know, Paul," Hank told him, "I'm not an expert in the psychology of how these people work."

"But you _did_ find cases similar to ours, right?" the older man asked, "Only like you said, no 'attempts', only successful rapes. _Then_ there was us, and things didn't go as planned, and what happened? They went out and found another family to attack, and now a young man's going to die, isn't he?"

Voight looked at his friend and soberly told him, "It definitely looks that way."

Paul inhaled slowly and responded, "There's got to be some way to find out who's behind this."

"Yep," Voight replied, "And I've got one more idea where to look."


	12. Chapter 12

"So now," Jay was trying to get a handle on the latest information of the investigation, "To try and find out who these guys are, Mouse is running facial recognition against every perp in the system, every cop in and out of the district, _and_ checking every arrest record for home invasions that involved 2-3 perps, to see if any faces match the one in the surveillance video, and _also_ to see if any of them carry the same M.O. of these two cases we've got now."

"No rest for the wicked," Voight commented, "If we don't come up with anything after all of this…" the point still got across despite remaining unsaid.

"Any update from the hospital yet?" Ruzek chanced to ask, knowing that they were _all_ dreading the outcome they knew was unavoidable.

"Not yet," Hank answered grimly and shook his head, "I don't think it'll be long."

"Burgess and Roman are at the hospital with the family to finish taking statements," Erin explained to the others, "On the offchance somebody will be able to remember anymore than they've already told us."

"Did the sister regain consciousness yet?" Olinsky asked.

"She's in and out right now," Erin answered, "She suffered a grade 3 concussion during the attack."

"What about the other brother?" Jay asked, "What's his status?"

"Shut down," Voight answered, "He fought the doctors when they tried to do a rape kit, injured one of them and two nurses, they _got_ it, but he's bordering on catatonic now."

"And if his brother dies he'll probably cross that border," Atwater said.

"Mm-hm," Voight wordlessly responded. He looked over at Dawson and noted the younger man had a vexed look on his face, and asked, "Something you want to share with us, Antonio?"

Dawson came out of his thoughts, whatever they were, and replied, "I was just thinking, the brother fought three members of the hospital staff when they tried to do a rape kit, does that ring a bell for anyone?"

Erin turned to Voight, "Jackie…three months ago when she was taken to the hospital, they tried doing a rape kit on her and she did the same thing."

"Except with more damage to the staff members, and _no_ kit to show for it," Voight remembered.

"What?" Halstead asked.

"You were out at the time," Alvin explained, "It's a long story."

"Jackie always maintained that she was never raped," Voight told them.

"But there was never a kit done to confirm that," Lindsay said, "And I'm sure right now if the brother were able to he'd deny it just as hard as she did. This is nothing that _anybody_ wants to admit to."

"Maybe so," Voight responded, "But I believe her."

Nobody said anything but there were several people in the room who shared the suspicion that Voight believed it because he _had_ to believe it, but nobody was about to admit that or suggest otherwise.

"So what do we do now?" Lindsay asked.

Voight seemed to ponder that question for a minute and told them, "Let me know when Mouse comes up with something, I'm going to go check on somebody."

"Want any of us to," Halstead started to ask, which was quickly cut off by Voight's firm, " _No_." Hank grabbed his jacket and headed downstairs.

The other Intelligence officers looked around at one another and wondered where they would go from here, and what it was Voight had in mind.

* * *

The house looked like a thousand other houses, nice sized, two story, relatively fresh paint job, looked new enough to put on the market. Just the sight of the place made Hank flash on that old Hitchcock movie, "Shadow of a Doubt", all that talk about ripping off the fronts of the oh so perfect houses in a normal little town, and seeing what people were really like, seeing the ugly truths that lay hidden behind the walls. The attempted crime that had taken place in this house so long ago was still fresh in Voight's mind, as he was sure it was in Jackie's. He knocked on the door and waited.

The front door opened and a vaguely familiar face was on the other side of the glass. A woman in her 40s who tried to make herself look like she was in her 30s, it seemed to Voight as far back as he could remember this woman, she was always trying to look younger. The sight of him took her aback for a second.

"Sergeant Voight," she said uncertainly.

"Alice," he addressed Paul's daughter.

"Is this a social call?" she asked.

"You heard about Jackie," he wasn't even asking, he flat out stated it, "And your father. You didn't come to the hospital." She wouldn't make eye contact and she looked to the side, but he persisted, "It's been two months…" very nonchalantly he asked her, "She's your only child…don't you care about her at all?"

That got her attention and she looked to him crossly and she asked him, "Am I under arrest?"

"No," he answered simply.

"Do I need a lawyer?" she asked.

"Not yet," Voight answered as he folded his arms against his chest.

She shook her head and told him, "Then I don't have anything to say to you," and closed the door.

That worked for all of two seconds before Voight threw the door open and showed himself in.

"You can't come in here!" Alice told him.

"And _yet_ ," Voight gestured to make the point he was.

"You can't just barge in here, this is private property," she told him, "I have my rights."

"Fine," Voight took his cell phone out of his pocket and held it out to her and told her, "Go ahead, call the police, who do you think they'll send? One of the patrolmen that answer to me." He saw the look she gave him and he added, "That's more like it," he pocketed his phone again and said to her, "Now let's try this again."

But she was still defiant and reiterated, "I don't have anything to say to you."

"And nothing to say to your daughter? _Or_ your father?" Voight asked her, and he could tell that struck a nerve.

"You know," she crossed her arms and told him, "It's not like they don't know where _we_ are, if they had something to say they could've come here, they could've called."

"You," Voight responded, "Are a real piece of work. You've got issues."

"Oh that's rich," she said, "Look who's talking, the big fat pot calling the kettle black, everybody knows what kind of a man _you_ are, Voight. You want to talk issues?"

"I can admit what I am," Hank told her, "And I know what your father is, and what your daughter is too. Jackie is a strong, brave woman, and every day it seems clearer to me it's _in spite of_ , not _because_ you and your husband raised her."

"Oh here we go," she said defensively, "I'm the bad mother, is that what she's been telling everyone for the last two months? That's what you came here to say?"

"You screwed up, Alice, we _all_ did, the signs were right in front of us and we just didn't pay any attention to them, maybe because we didn't _want_ to. It's no great sin, not usually. Believe me, I've gotten to be an expert on that subject. You and your husband both messed up, 10 years ago by not noticing what was going on, and two months ago by not wanting to accept what your daughter was telling you. Just admit it and move on," Voight told her, "Take it from me, it still huts, but a lot _less_."

"You don't get it," the woman told him as she shook her head, "It's not true, it _can't_ be."

"Why? Because you would've _known_ it?" he asked. She nodded, "Because you would've sensed something was wrong right away, because that's what a parent does? Yeah, been there, join the club." He dismissed the subject and told her, "I've got to go."

She waited until he'd turned and was heading for the door before she called to him, "Hank!" he turned to look back at her and she asked him, " _Is_ she alright?"

Hank shrugged nonchalantly and told her, "It's not like you don't know where we are," and on that note he was out the door.

Voight was driving back to the district when his phone started ringing, keeping one hand on the steering wheel, he raised his phone to his ear, "Yeah?"

"Mouse got through running the pictures," Antonio told him, "You remember he said it's not definitive."

"And?"

"He found a few possible matches," Dawson answered, "We're going to need Roger and Jackie to see if they recognize anybody."

"So wake them up," Voight told him, "I'll be there in a minute," and he disconnected the call and pressed the accelerator closer to the floor.

The hospital hadn't called yet, but Hank knew they would, it was the kind of call even the most hardened cops dreaded to get, but he knew before the day was over that it _would_ come, and when it did they wouldn't just be looking at home invasion and rape, but homicide on top of everything else.

* * *

"Trudy," Antonio went down the stairs and over to her desk, "Hank wants us to get the kids up and have them look at some pictures, we might have a lead on who was in here last night."

"Oh great," Trudy said, "Now I can get some leg space back here again. Help me get them up."

Antonio stepped behind the desk and saw what Trudy was talking about, Roger and Jackie were sprawled clear across the floor space where Trudy usually stood, he could just imagine what it'd been like for her standing around them all afternoon. Trudy knelt down beside Roger and tapped his face to wake him up, Antonio got down on one knee and tried to rouse Jackie, who had turned over and was sleeping on one arm and had the other high over her head.

"Jackie," he said as he tried to shake her awake, "Hey Jackie, time to wake up, hey!"

All he got from her at first were a few incoherent mumbles, then as her eyes flew open, she swung her arm back and tried elbowing him in the nose before she realized who it was.

"Whoa! Hey, it's me, Jackie," he told her.

She turned on her side and blinked a couple times as she looked up at him, "Antonio?"

"Yeah, 'you people Antonio', remember?" he asked as he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up.

"What's going on?" Roger asked as he also started to come around.

"We got some pictures we want you guys to look at and see if you recognize any of them," Dawson told them.

Jackie tried to flex her fingers on her other hand but she told Antonio, "My whole arm's asleep."

"No wonder," he said as he grabbed her hand and shook her arm to get the blood circulating again, "You know you two have been out cold for five hours?"

"We have?" Roger asked half lethargically and half in disbelief.

"Where's Voight?" Jackie asked.

"He's going to be here in a minute," Antonio explained, "Come on, get up."

Jackie was still groggy but coming around, she looked around the room and asked, "Where's Grandpa?" she turned to the desk sergeant and asked her, "Trudy, where is he?"

"He's in Hank's office, resting," Trudy told her. She'd been at her job long enough to perfect her poker face, she could flat out lie to anybody and not give anything away. Right now she figured that was a simpler answer than explaining _what_ Paul was doing in Voight's office, which was likely praying heavily for the latest victim in the hospital, and his family.

"I want to see him," the teen girl told Trudy, "I want to see Grandpa."

The front doors opened and Voight stepped in and made his way over towards them and asked, "What's going on?"

"Hank," Jackie went over to him, "What's going on?"

"We're going to try something," he explained to her, "I want both of you upstairs to look through some photos."

Voight had made it clear to everyone earlier that until further notice, he didn't want anybody telling the two teenagers about the recent attack. Both Roger and Jackie were already carrying around enough guilt about what happened, he didn't need them obsessing over this aspect as well, that was _his_ job.

"Come on," he told them, "It's going to be alright."

They followed Hank and Antonio up the stairs to Intelligence, and upon arriving they saw the rest of the detectives standing around waiting for them. Jackie caught a glimpse of Halstead and started to back down the stairs. Voight grabbed her by her shirt and pulled her back towards him.

"What's this about?" Roger wanted to know.

Voight pointed over to Mouse's station, who went right to work in bringing up several images on his compute screen. Jackie went over with Roger and they looked at the screen.

"Are these cops?" Jackie asked.

"Just tell us if you've seen any of them before," Voight told them.

"How the hell would we know?" Jackie looked back at them, "Do you have any idea how many people we pass by in a day in this city? We could've encountered any of these people _anywhere_."

"Just let us know if you _recognize_ any of them from somewhere," Antonio responded.

The two of them looked through several pictures of men who were of similar ages and builds, and after a while Jackie told them, "I don't know, they _all_ look familiar, like I said, how would we ever know if we ever walked by any of these people on the street? They all look like the kind of people we see every day."

"What about you, Roger?" Voight asked.

It was obvious that the boy was even more lost on the subject than Jackie was, he just stared ahead blankly at the screen and shook his head, "I don't know."

"So now what?" Jackie turned to Voight as she took a step back, "This is hopeless, we're never going to…"

Since she wasn't watching where she was going, Jackie backed into Erin, and then after a couple of seconds with a blank look on her face, she did the unthinkable by everybody's standards and reached behind her and grabbed Erin's breast. That left everybody stunned, Lindsay included, even Voight's eyes bugged out at the sight, and it was a couple seconds before anybody could form any words.

"Jackie, what the hell do you…"

"It was a woman," she said as she took her hand off Erin's chest.

"What?" Voight asked.

Jackie's eyes were wide now with realization as she looked at the detectives and told them, "The second man, the one who held the gun on us, it was a _woman_."

For some reason that declaration was enough to make Mouse turn in his chair to look back at her.

"Are you sure?" Ruzek asked.

"Yeah I'm sure," Jackie said, "When I jumped on the third guy's back, the second one tried pulling me off, and I felt something pressed against my back but I didn't put it together at the time, it was her breasts. Even for a guy he would've been too skinny to have man boobs, it was a woman!"

The Intelligence division looked around at one another in silent awe and confusion, things just took a very unusual and unexpected turn.

Even more unexpected was Mouse's comment of, "That might just crack this whole thing," he turned back to his computer and said, "I think I know who they are."

"Who?" Voight wanted to know.


	13. Chapter 13

Mouse brought up one picture in particular on the screen, "This was one of the possible matches to the facial recognition scan. Say hello to David Hadley."

The man in the picture was a large man in his late 30s who if there was a defined look for people who like to brutalize weaker targets, he had that look.

"That looks like the guy," Olinsky noted.

"He looks familiar," Voight said.

"He should, he used to be a cop," Mouse explained, "That is until about five years ago, he lost his badge when it was found out he got a cut from the drug dealers he was supposed to be busting, $200,000 was found stashed at his home. Then after he was discharged he was arrested for raping a 16 year old boy, in the end all he got was six months."

"And he didn't go on the registry?" Erin asked.

"Apparently not. And that's not all," Mouse brought up two more pictures, "These are his apparent partners in crime."

The photos of a scraggly looking blonde woman and another man that looked like a junior version of Hadley came up on the screen, both of them looked like they'd lived hard for the last 20 years which made them look 30 years older.

"His girlfriend," Mouse pointed to the woman's picture, "Anne Stockard, and," he pointed to the other man's picture, "Her brother, Rick."

"Wait, what?" Erin asked in disbelief, "Her boyfriend's raping guys, his _girlfriend_ helps him get away with it and her _brother_ is in on the job too? That is _sick_."

"That's one messed up family," Antonio said.

Voight's initial response to the photos was what a verbal double take might sound like, then he added, "They look like the gang from a Wes Craven movie."

Mouse put three full size pictures on the screen changing them from headshots to mug shots, "They all got busted for a few B & Es, got probation every time."

"This wonderful revolving door justice system," Ruzek noted.

Voight looked to the two teens and asked them, "Any of _them_ ring a bell?"

They both shook their heads.

"Got an address on them?" Voight asked.

"Yep," Mouse answered.

"Alright, let's go pick them up."

"Are we coming too, Hank?" Jackie asked.

"No, you two are staying here," he told her, "And I mean it, _stay_ here." With the tone of his voice, they didn't dare question his authority.

* * *

"Chicago Police!" Voight announced _as_ the front door of the house was busted open, "Get your hands up NOW!"

Everybody charged in with their guns drawn and took a room, it didn't take long to find the three people in question; all of them were strung out on the couch in the living room and slow to grasp what was going on, making it all the easier for the police to cuff them and jerk them to their feet or force them onto their knees.

"What the hell is this?" David Hadley demanded to know.

"You are under arrest," Olinsky told him, "That's what this is…funny, you look bigger in your mug shot."

"What's going on, David?" his girlfriend asked as she got her hands cuffed behind her back.

"All three of you are under arrest for breaking and entering, rape and attempted murder," Antonio answered, "That's what's going on."

"David!" Anne Stockard turned towards her boyfriend.

He just shook his head and told her, "Don't say _nothing_ ," he looked to the cops and told them, "I know my rights, I want a lawyer."

"Yeah, we'll get to that at the station," Voight said nonchalantly, "Everybody _out_!"

"We didn't do nothing!" Anne's brother protested as they were half marched/half dragged out of the house.

"Shut up, Rick!" the ringleader told him.

"Get them in the car," Voight told his men.

"Then what?" Olinsky asked.

"Then we separate them."

* * *

"I want a lawyer!" David Hadley demanded as he and his friends were hauled into the district house, it was the only thing he'd been saying the whole car ride there.

"Yeah yeah yeah," Olinsky replied dismissively, "We heard you the first 400 times."

"You got nothing on us," Anne said, "We didn't do nothing."

"If I had a nickel for every time I heard that, I could retire in Maui," Trudy commented from her desk without looking up from the magazine she was reading.

Voight came in behind the rest of them and quickly made his way to the front of the line, he told Antonio and Ruzek, "Take these two to the cage."

"What about her?" Ruzek asked.

"She stays up here," Voight said.

"Don't say nothing, Anne!" David told her.

The junkie looking blonde shook her head, "I won't."

"They've got nothing," David said, "They can't prove we did anything, they can't…"

"YOU!"

Everybody heard the sudden exclamation and turned to see what they already knew, Jackie stood at the foot of the stairs and when she saw the three of them, she charged at Hadley and knocked him to the floor and started bashing his head in.

Quick as a flash, Voight, Antonio, and Jay were all pulling her off of the man on the floor.

"Sounds like a positive ID to me," Jay noted, "Not bad given she never even saw your face."

The house was suddenly alive with pandemonium, everybody screaming over everyone else, but over it all Voight was able to scream loud enough for his men to hear, "GET THEM OUT OF HERE, NOW!"

David and Rick were hauled off to go in the cage downstairs, and Anne was dragged off to one of the interrogation rooms.

"Hank," Paul came down the stairs once all the noise had died down, "Hank, what's going on?"

Voight simply replied, "We got them, Paul. We got them."

It took a few seconds for the words to register with the older man, then a look of shock came over him and he exclaimed, "Oh thank God. But now what?"

"Now, you keep an eye on your granddaughter," Voight told him, "I've got work to do."

* * *

"I want a lawyer," Anne said when Voight came into the interrogation room.

"Lady wants a lawyer, Sergeant," Atwater commented.

"She can't afford one," Voight turned to the woman and asked point blank, "Can you? We already know about David's cut from the dealers when he was still on the force. None of you are employed, if you can afford a $200 an hour lawyer we're gonna know that money came from illegal activities, and we're gonna seize all your assets."

"Okay, fine," she replied, "Then I want a free lawyer, one of those pro bono ones."

"You mean a public defender?"

"Yeah, one of them."

"Guess she hasn't heard the news," Antonio said to Voight.

"Heard what?" she asked in a leery tone.

"Public defenders are out on strike this week," Voight answered without missing a beat, "Apparently they're tired of defending clients that can't afford to pay them and therefore don't make the trouble of trying to make guilty people look innocent worth their time."

"They can't do that, can they?" she asked as she looked from one cop to another.

Atwater shrugged, "They're lawyers, they can do whatever they want."

She chewed on that for a minute before telling them, "I'm still not talking."

"Fine, then I am," Voight told her as he sat down across from her, "And you're going to listen."

The woman tried to act bored out of her mind but it was easy to see her tensing up as Voight sat down.

"I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, I'm sure the experts, the criminal psychiatrists, who evaluate people like you for a living, could probably come up with a word to describe you…your boyfriend gets off on raping young men, you _help_ him to do it, what the hell's the matter with _you_?"

She didn't answer.

"And then if that weren't perverted enough, you bring your brother into this to assist in it as well, exactly…how hard up for a boyfriend do you have to be that you decide this is the best you can do?"

Finally that got a response out of her, but not much, she flashed him a cold glare and said, "You don't get it."

"Yeah, and I hope I don't, because the day I did I'd probably have to shoot myself," Voight answered. He pushed his chair back and stood up, "Your last victim is in the hospital _dying_ from a skull fracture either you, or your boyfriend, or your brother, or all _three_ of you gave him, and when we get that call from the hospital, all three of you are going to be tried for murder."

She didn't know what to say in response to that, she just looked at him with wide eyes.

"Whatever the extent of the role was you played in all this, you're just as guilty as he is, you're an accomplice to the rapes he committed, and you-make-me-sick," Voight said matter-of-factly.

* * *

"I want a lawyer!" Hadley yelled as Voight entered the room, "I want a doctor, after what that crazy bitch did, I demand medical attention! I'm going to sue the city and this whole police department."

"Oh, I'm concerned," Voight said cynically as he approached the cage.

"You know they say confession's good for the soul," Olinsky said as he stood against the door, "It's also very good for the justice system. You feel like opening up about what you've done, or are we going to do this the hard way?"

"They don't have anything," Hadley told his would-be brother-in-law, "If they had any evidence on us they wouldn't _need_ a confession. They're just fishing."

"Oh that's not true at all," Voight said as he opened the door and stepped in, "We've got enough evidence to try all three of you for rape, and murder."

"Murder?" Rick asked.

"He's bluffing, they're all full of shit," David told him.

"Your last victim succumbed to a skull fracture," Voight told them, "That's murder 1, that's going to be the full sentence. Now, we could take this to court, wait six months for it to even get to that point, spend 3 weeks in court, spend another 30 minutes for the jury to come back with a guilty verdict, be a huge waste of the taxpayers' time and money."

"You're lying," Hadley said.

"Shut up," Voight said simply but firmly, "I'm not finished yet. We have _no_ intention of taking this to trial."

Hadley got a sickening smirk on his face, "Yeah, I figured we could cut a deal."

"Oh yeah, we can make a deal alright," Voight said, "You're going to allocute to every crime you committed: every home invasion, every rape, you're going to plead guilty, and you're going to decline any chance to appeal your sentence, you're going to spare every living victim you ever had the pain and ridicule of a trial, and the stress of 27 years' worth of appeals."

"Hey what the hell kind of deal is that?" Rick asked.

Voight bitch slapped the smaller man and told him, "I'm not _finished_ yet."

Hadley looked at him suspiciously, "And what happens if we don't take this 'deal'?"

"Then we go to plan B," Voight answered, "And you commit suicide here in this cell."

"What?!" Rick asked.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Hadley wanted to know.

Voight took a step back, and looked around the cell, "You know, it's a funny thing about this place…lot of people come in here…and being locked up for a few hours just makes them go nuts. When they can't get out, they choose instead to kill themselves as their only means of escape." He gestured to the door, "They hang themselves on something", he pointed to the wall, "They bash their heads in until they bleed out, or brain damage occurs, whichever comes first…" he drew his sidearm and homed it in on Hadley and added, "They try reaching for a cop's gun, leaving us no choice but to shoot…suicide is a very strange thing."

"Suicide? You mean _murder_ ," Hadley said.

"Try me," Voight kept his aim dead on the ex-cop, "And when I get done rearranging things, there won't be a medical examiner in the _state_ that'll say anything other than suicide."

"Come on, Hadley, you used to be a cop, you ought to know how we work," Olinsky offered from the other side of the door, " _Every_ death is a 'suicide'."

The tension was thick in the air for the next thirty seconds as the two men actually seemed to debate their fate. Voight moved his gun a fraction of an inch closer towards them.

"Alright, alright!" Hadley gave in, "We'll confess, you win!"

"Good," Voight replied as he holstered his gun.

* * *

"Paul," Hank went up the stairs to meet his friend, "It's over."

"Are you sure?" the older man asked.

Voight nodded, "They're going to allocute, there won't be a trial, Roger won't have to go to court."

The grandfather let out a loud sigh of relief and clutched his chest, "Thank God, tell you the truth, Voight, I don't think he could survive it."

"That's why I persuaded them it'd be in their best interest to plead guilty," Voight said, "Where are they anyway?"

"Try your office," Paul said.

"My office?" Voight repeated, and decided to check it out.

Opening the door, he saw Roger and Jackie huddled close together on the couch by the door, it looked like the two of them had cried themselves to sleep in each other's arms. Voight could just imagine what had been going through both their minds for the past hour. He closed the door, went over to the couch and nudged Jackie on the shoulder to wake her up.

Jackie was sluggish and slow to respond, she murmured a couple times before her eyes got open and she looked at him, "Voight? What's going on?"

By now Roger was starting to come around as well, Voight addressed them in a slightly softer tone than usual as he told them, "I want you two to know that you don't have anything more to worry about. It's all over, there's not going to be a trial."

"You killed them?" Jackie asked.

"No," he replied, "There are too many victims to make going to trial worth the trouble, all three of them are going to plead guilty."

"Is that going to bring closure to the others?" Roger inquired.

"I don't know," Voight answered, "They won't get to face their attackers in court, but they'll know they got locked up anyway."

"It works for me," Roger said.

Jackie nodded in agreement, "Thanks, Hank."

"Even so," Voight said to the young man, "There's somebody I want you to talk to about what's happened."

Roger looked at him skeptically, "Who?"


	14. Chapter 14

"Are you sure this thing's ready?" Voight asked Mouse.

The younger man punched a few keys on the computer's keyboard and told him, "Yeah, it's ready to go."

"It's working now?" Voight asked.

"Yeah."

Voight looked at the screen and asked him, "So how come I don't see her?" He bobbed up and down in his chair a couple times incase it was the angle of the webcam that was wrong, but when that didn't do anything he called to the screen, "Hey Olivia, are you there?"

A couple seconds later he saw movement on the screen and saw as Olivia Benson came into the picture.

"Voight," she said as she sat down on the other end of the video chat, "You're early."

Voight looked at her and did a double take. The last time he'd been to New York Olivia still had long hair that nearly came down to her shoulders. Now that he saw her he could see that she'd recently had it cut short again, not like the first time he'd seen her, but probably more akin to how she looked a few years ago, and it showed because it made her look 10 years younger than the last time he'd seen her in New York.

"Hey, you cut your hair," he said, "I like it."

He didn't miss the slight upturn of the corners of her mouth at his comment. "Thanks."

"Should I still be here?" Mouse asked sitting in the chair next to Voight.

Voight jabbed a thumb to the side, "Beat it."

"Got it," he replied as he stood up and walked away.

"Nice," Olivia laughed on the screen.

"So how are things?" Voight asked.

She seemed to consider the question for a few seconds before answering, "Pretty good, you?"

"Getting there," Voight told her, "Unfortunately I'm still awaiting a phone call from the hospital about our other victims."

"My God."

"The good thing," Hank said, "Is there's not going to be a trial, they're gonna allocute."

"They seem to have a habit of doing that around you," Olivia noted.

Hank subtly shrugged and responded, "That's my charm."

"Oh yeah, I'm familiar with that," she replied, "So where are they?"

"Roger's gonna be here in a minute," Hank explained.

"What about Jackie?"

"Her I wouldn't hold my breath on," he answered.

"How's she doing?" Olivia asked.

Voight considered the answer and went with, "I think she's gonna be alright now that she knows Roger is."

"That's good," she said.

Voight heard somebody approaching and saw Roger being escorted over by Trudy.

"Ah, the man of the hour," he said, and moved his chair over so Roger could sit down in front of the screen.

Roger looked at the woman on the computer screen curiously and hesitantly, and finally sat down, but he didn't say anything.

"Olivia," Voight nodded his head towards the boy, "This is Roger Murdock."

"Hello, Roger," Olivia addressed the teen boy, "My name's Olivia Benson, I'm a detective for Manhattan's Special Victims Unit, I'm a friend of Hank's and Jackie's, I met her when she came out here to New York a couple months ago."

Voight could see the boy was still reluctant to talk.

"You know, Roger," Olivia said, "Jackie told me a lot about you when she was out here."

"She did?" he asked.

"Did she tell you about me?" Olivia asked him.

"A little," he finally answered, then hesitantly, "She said you were nice."

That caught Olivia off guard and she let out a small laugh, "I'll take that as a compliment, I know they're rare with her. Roger, Hank tells me that you were recently the victim of a criminal assault."

He bit his bottom lip and nodded slowly, "Yeah."

"You know, Roger," Olivia said, "Special Victims specifically works sex crimes, rape, sexual assaults, child molestation, there's _nothing_ that we haven't seen, and we know it never gets easier for the victims, it never gets easier for the detectives either."

Roger made a low sound in his throat, neither cop knew if it was supposed to imply affirmation or not.

"I know what you're going through, Roger," Olivia told him, "Assault is no less traumatizing than actual rape, you still have a whole cyclone of emotions you have to deal with: anger, fear, embarrassment, wanting more than anything to pretend it never happened, even when your attacker is caught, you still don't process it all at once. And I'm not speaking just from my experience as a detective, but my own experience of being a victim of sexual assault."

Roger blinked and his eyes widened, "You?"

Olivia nodded, "Several years ago I was working undercover in a prison investigating a guard who was raping women prisoners…there was a storage room he took them to to rape them, and uh, he took me down there. I was undercover, I didn't have my gun, my badge, anything, there was nothing I could do to stop him, my saving grace was that my partner was also undercover as one of the guards, and he found us and busted in just before the guard could rape me. For a while I convinced myself that since I wasn't actually raped, I was okay, but, it didn't last long. Soon, I was edgy, I couldn't sleep, I kept having flashbacks, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong since I hadn't actually been raped. See, experiencing it for yourself instead of just investigating it all the time puts a whole new perspective on it."

Roger nodded slightly, through the corner of his eye Voight could see the boy was having noticeable trouble with this conversation, and probably wouldn't be able to hold it together much longer. But he still firmly believed that this was precisely what Roger needed.

"Suddenly," Olivia continued, "All the stuff we tell survivors of sexual assault and rape, just sounds like meaningless words…'you survived, that's the important thing', 'there will be closure from putting your rapist away'…didn't mean a whole lot to me at the time either. It never fully goes away, no matter how you recover, you're always left with the memories of what happened…but in time it _does_ get easier, _especially_ if you have a good supportive group of friends around you, and I happen to know you have some really good ones there." She cast a quick glance towards Voight and added, "They make a real difference, they help serve as a reminder that it's over and you're safe now."

Voight sat back in his chair and watched the conversation and didn't say anything but he flashed a quick, small smile at Olivia.

* * *

"Well I'd say that went well," Hank said to Olivia once the video conference with Roger was over.

"I hope he'll be alright," Olivia said, "He seems like a sweet kid."

"I think he'll be fine," Voight told her, "Especially after talking with you. You have a real way with these kids."

"After all the years I've spent interviewing them, I'd hope so," she replied.

"Hey, you know something," Voight said to her, "This would be a real handy way to stay in contact. I like being able to look at the person I'm talking to."

"Oh? Do you say that to all the detectives?" Olivia asked.

"Just the pretty ones," he answered, "How about it? What're you doing tonight?"

Olivia laughed and told him, "I'm up to my armpits in red tape on our latest investigation, I'm going to be dotting i's until tomorrow."

"Eh, just as well," Voight responded, "Paul's house isn't a crime scene anymore but I still think the first night after this whole mess is going to go over a lot better if I take them back to _my_ house to spend the night."

"Sounds like you'll have your hands full," Olivia said.

"Nah, they're good kids, they'll be fine," Voight told her, "I figure it's the least I can do for them…" Somberly, he explained, "Back when my wife passed, Paul and his wife came to the funeral, they stayed until we were the only ones left...I'd managed to hold it all together until then, you know, long enough to make all the arrangements and call everybody, then once the service was over and everybody was gone, I started knocking back the drinks so I wouldn't have to feel anything, and drank myself right into the middle of a drunken stupor. Paul took us back to his house, they put Justin and Erin up in what's now Jackie's and Roger's bedroom, and they left me in the living room and cordoned it off until the next morning when it had passed. I woke up sprawled on their lambskin rug naked with the mother of all hangovers, and a few holes in the wall. To this day I have no recollection what happened that night, all I know is they helped me get through the worst of it, the first night after when it all started to sink in, after that, letting them stay at my place is the least I can do in return."

"I can see why this case was so important to you," Olivia said, "Sounds like he's a great friend."

"One of the best," Voight answered.

Olivia looked at him somberly and said, "I'm sorry about your wife, Voight."

"That makes two of us," he responded.

"Well, I better let you go," she said.

"Yeah," he agreed less than convincingly, and added, "It was nice talking to you, Olivia."

She smiled at him and replied, "It was nice to see you, Voight. Tell Jackie I said hi."

Voight turned slightly and then turned back to the screen and told her, "I'll let you tell her yourself."

Jackie stepped in front of the computer and gave a small wave, "Hi, Olivia, how's New York?"

"I wish I could say quieter since you left," the former sergeant answered, "But given it's New York that'd be a lie. I heard about what happened out there."

"Yeah," Jackie said dismissively as she glanced at Voight.

"It was a very brave thing you did," Olivia told her, "Roger's very lucky to have you."

Jackie looked back at the woman on the screen and shook her head, "I don't know about that. If he hadn't been staying with me none of this would've happened."

"And if it hadn't been for you," Olivia pointed out, "His father would still be beating the hell out of him," she looked to Voight and added, "And he wouldn't have gone to jail for aiding and abetting a rapist."

"Is there anything on this side you don't know about?" Jackie asked.

"Very little," she answered, "I have a good source there."

"You don't say," Jackie replied, looking towards Voight.

"Okay, Olivia," Voight said, "I'm signing off now. Talk to you later."

"Bye."

"Where's Roger?" Jackie asked Hank as he stood up from his chair.

"He and your grandpa are downstairs visiting with Trudy," he told her, "I'd suggest you go join them."

"Thanks, Hank," she said, "I really appreciate everything you've done for us."

"No problem, kid," he replied as he headed to his office.

He'd no sooner closed the door than his phone rang. The moment he'd been dreading for most of the day. He picked up the receiver, "Voight."

He listened to the news the doctor had and took it in, then he hung up and left his office and headed downstairs and found the others at the front desk talking with Trudy. He went over to Paul and asked him, "Can I speak with you for a minute?"

Paul excused himself and left Trudy telling colorful anecdotes of their dating days to the two teenagers, and Voight and Paul headed over to the corner of the room.

"What is it?" Paul asked lowly.

Almost under his breath Voight told him, "The hospital just called."

Paul's eyes widened slightly but somberly, "The young man died."

Voight shook his head, "He took an unexpected turn, they think he's going to pull through, so far it looks promising."

"Thank God," Paul exhaled, "Not exactly a happy ending but I guess this is as close as we're going to get."

"Better than some days," Hank told him.


	15. Chapter 15

A/N: Sorry for the long wait, everybody. Here is the final chapter, thank you for reading and for your reviews!

That night, Hank stood just outside of the room he'd put Jackie and Roger in for the night, the door was left slightly ajar so he stood back and watched them, never moving a muscle, never making a sound, the two teens completely oblivious to the fact he was even there. In another life he would've been the perfect boogeyman, able to creep up on unsuspecting victims in a moment's notice. He stayed that way for half an hour, listening to their every word, watching their every move.

Finally around 1 o' clock, the two of them crawled into bed, though they didn't turn out the lights. More to the point, one light was left on, the bulb was dim and it cast an eerie half light across the room and left the rest in shadows. If they weren't already sleeping with the lights on at night, the events of the last couple days would surely guarantee a future of it, Hank was convinced. Roger climbed in on the left side of the bed, Jackie on the right, both of them, Voight got a ringside seat to, stripped down to just their T-shirts and underwear. They pulled the covers up and moved even closer together. Jackie scooted up against Roger, turned on her side and wrapped one arm around his back, and laid her head on his chest, as though she was listening for a guarantee his heart was still beating. Within a few moments both of them were asleep.

Voight had heard the ever so slight sounds of footsteps coming up the stairs and creeping up the hall, but he still didn't move away from the door. He felt the presence of another person behind him, and felt the breath on the back of his neck.

"They certainly do make a cute couple, don't they?" Paul asked as he looked in over Hank's shoulder.

Voight didn't say a word but backed away from the door, and had Paul follow him down the hall to his own bedroom.

"I hate to break your heart, Paul, but I don't think those two are in love with each other," Voight told him.

"Oh no?" Paul inquired.

"I think the relationship that exists between the two of them is far more primitive," Hank said, "I think they just need each other in order to survive."

"That's an odd way of putting it, Hank," the older man said.

"I think it's true," Voight insisted, "Clearly they love each other but I don't think it has anything to do with romance."

"Oh, you mean like you and that lady cop from New York?" Paul teased.

"Don't start," he said warningly.

"Well, you may be right, Hank," Paul said, "You know, the walls in my house aren't all that thick, and I've never heard much coming out of their room. Now, time I caught my daughter in bed with her boyfriend…"

"If you don't mind, Paul," Hank said, "It's been a long couple days, I just want to get some sleep."

The older man nodded and agreed, "Me too. Somehow I don't get the feeling there'll be much of if in the next few days. Just as I don't predict those two suddenly getting their independence anytime soon."

Voight sat down on the trunk next to his bed and untied his shoes, "What do you mean?"

"You've seen them," Paul said, "I think it's going to be a while before they feel safe living alone together."

"Paul," Hank told his friend, "I don't think that's _ever_ going to happen."

The grandfather thought about it and responded, "I suppose you're right, knowing what I know now, I don't suppose Jackie's felt safe alone since she was 10 years old."

"She didn't feel safe with her parents either," Voight added.

"So," Paul tapped his chest with both hands, "That leaves me…and you of course." Paul sat down on the other end of the trunk and asked the cop, "Do you think they'll _ever_ be alright?"

"Is anyone?" Voight asked, "Are we?"

"I suppose not," he answered, then got up, "Well, I guess I'll go make up the couch."

"Stay," Voight said as though he was giving orders to a dog.

Paul turned around, "What?"

"You are a guest in my house," Voight told him, "I don't put guests on the couch." He jerked a thumb towards his bed.

"Oh no, I couldn't intrude," Paul said.

"You're not," Voight said, "Because I'm staying too."

"What?"

"Wouldn't be the first time," Hank told his friend, and looked at him with a knowing eye, "Would it?"

"I suppose not," the elder Lynch responded as he also removed his shoes.

"Besides," Hank added, "This way if anything happens, we're both up here to hear it."

The two men lay on top of Voight's bed and stared up at the dark ceiling. After a couple minutes, Voight broke the silence, "Thank you."

Paul looked towards him, "For what?"

"For taking me and the kids in after Camille's funeral," Voight answered, "I'm not sure I would've made it through that first night without you guys…for that matter, I'm not sure _how_ I made it through anyway. And thank you for not letting the kids see me like that. They had to have known, but at least they didn't have to see how bad it was for themselves. That, I think, would've been my biggest regret."

"And that would be no small feat," Paul commented, "But it was nothing, Hank, you're like family, of course we would."

"It wasn't nothing to me," Voight replied, "I always tried to put Justin and Erin first, anything happened, I made sure they'd be alright, in that moment though, even that took the backseat to how I was feeling that day."

Voight felt a strong hand on his shoulder, and he heard his friend respond, "I know. We could tell just by looking at you."

Voight thought back to that time. The first night was the worst, but the second one wasn't much better. Actually his mind went back to the morning after the funeral. The doors opened to the living room, and the next thing he was aware of was something being draped over his naked body. The next thing he saw was his friend, Paul, standing over him, helping him up.

He could hear voices out of the room past the pocket doors. Erin and Justin. Paul's wife kept them away, took them with her back to the house to get a change of clothes and whatever else they needed to stay for another night. Voight had spent most of the day on the bathroom floor wrapped in a sheet alternating between puking his guts up or futilely trying to sleep off the remainder of his hangover. Once again, they kept him closed off from the kids so they wouldn't know, oh but they had to know. They'd made up some excuse, a bug, the stomach flu, something going around that other people had that they knew, assured the kids he'd be fine the next day, but they had to have known, Erin especially had to have known, she'd lived with it her whole life. They never said anything though. A mutual dirty secret that without a word ever being exchanged, all had agreed never to talk about, it was the only thing that made sense.

Finally by the second night, Paul helped scrape his friend off the floor and helped him into the shower to make him somewhat presentable when the kids saw him the next morning. Voight spent an hour and a half in the shower, half of that time was just him leaned against the wall, completely oblivious to the hot water pouring down on him, actually processing the fact that his wife was gone and he had to pick up the pieces and continue by himself. He was still a zombie on the floor when Paul came back in to check on him, so the older man had to help Voight stand up, then had to help him get cleaned up, and in a fresh change of clothes. It had been decided that Paul's wife would stay upstairs with Erin and Justin for the night, and Paul was going to bunk with Hank on the hide-a-bed in the living room. By that time, Voight was starting to come back around, and he didn't take kindly to the suggestion.

"What do you think?" he'd asked as Paul pulled the cushions off the couch, "That if you're not watching me all night I'll slit my wrists or something?"

"Not that I think you would, Hank," Paul had said, "But I'd rather not take the chance."

Voight tried to act like he was past being fazed by anything; his little charade held in place for a couple hours, but during the night all the memories came flooding back to him. He buried his face in his pillow but couldn't stifle the sobs that woke Paul up and drew his attention to the man laying next to him on the bed. Hank felt Paul's hand on his back and he could hear the man talking to him, but it was all a blur to him as he continued to grieve for the loss of his wife.

Once Hank was able to compose himself, it was obvious that neither of them were going to get any sleep, so they propped the pillows up against the back of the couch and Paul turned on the TV and they made small talk over black coffee and the late night movies on cable.

The next morning Hank knew he had to pull himself together and get his and his kids' lives back on track. He thanked the Lynches for their hospitality and took Justin and Erin home, to face that empty house together. The first step in hadn't been so bad, it was when he looked around and knew that Camille wasn't going to come out of the kitchen or down the stairs that it really hit him, but he held himself together. He wrapped an arm around each of the kids and apologized to them for the last couple of days, and told them both that he loved them. He swore to them that they were going to make it, he wasn't sure how, but they'd find a way. But Voight knew, even if he'd never admit it to anybody else, if it weren't for Paul watching over him the first two nights, the odds weren't good he would've pulled through, even for the kids. The two men had already been friends for a good long while when it happened, but that weekend was what clinched their friendship. It was a debt Hank knew he could never repay, but when Paul came to him two months ago about Jackie's disappearance, Hank knew it was the closest he would ever come to repaying the favor. Even now with what had just happened to all of them, Voight still didn't feel that they would ever be squared away for what Paul Lynch had done for him a decade ago.

Voight's attention snapped back to the here and now, even though it was too dark to actually see him, he turned towards Paul and said to him, "You were really watching over me that time."

"Somebody had to," Paul answered simply.

"I don't think there's anything I could do that would ever repay what you did for me," Voight told him.

"You gave us back our lives," the older man said to him, "You put three violent people away before they could kill anybody. That exceeds anything we could've done, Hank."

Voight thought back to the last couple days, all the fear, all the pain, all the trauma these three people would have to live with for the rest of their lives, and he started think if he _hadn't_ tried to call Paul that day, and gone over when he got no response. By the time anybody else found out what had happened…no, he couldn't think of that, he couldn't think how much longer it would've been until he'd gotten the news.

"Maybe you're right there, Paul," he said.

"I think the kids will be alright, Hank," his friend told him, "It helped that they had somebody overseeing everything that cared about what happened to them."

Hank thought about it and nodded, "Maybe."

* * *

3 o' clock in the morning, did people ever sleep past this hour once they had kids? Voight turned over and saw the other side of the bed was empty. He didn't have to guess where Paul was. He tossed the covers back and got up, stalked down the hall and found his friend in the exact spot he had been two hours ago, right outside Jackie and Roger's room, glancing in through the crack in the door, watching them while they slept.

Voight came up behind Paul and looked over his shoulder to see in the door. The two of them were still asleep and looked as though they'd barely moved since the two men had left them earlier.

"Everything okay?" Voight asked.

Paul took a step back from the door, "I think so. Figured I might as well check while I was up."

Voight moved to the front of the line and took a better look in. The dim light shone on them enough that he could make out their features. If he didn't know any better, he'd swear they looked like they were sleeping peacefully. He hoped.

"I think you're right," Voight said as they headed back down the hall, "I think they'll be okay now."

"The city of Chicago sleeps a little easier tonight, thanks to Hank Voight," Paul said, "The man who makes it safer one less perp at a time."

Voight shook his head, "If it hadn't been for the descriptions you three were able to give us, we wouldn't have been able to find them. Especially if Jackie hadn't figured out one of the guys we were looking for was a woman."

Paul was silent for a minute before asking Voight, "What do you suppose would possess a woman to do that? For that matter, what would possess _anybody_ to do that?"

Voight shrugged, "Who knows? That's one I think still best left to the criminal psychiatrists to figure out. In the meantime, it's my job to haul them in."

"And make them confess to spare their victims having to go through a trial," Paul added.

"All part of the job," Voight replied without missing a beat.

The End


End file.
